TravelFlow's live supplier search runs against RateHawk for hotels. This article covers why a search returns nothing, why it is slow, and what the results are actually priced in.
Only Hotel Search Is Live
RateHawk is the only connected supplier, and it only sells accommodation. On Bookings > GDS Search Travelport, Amadeus and Sabre appear as supplier switches marked Not connected, and cannot be switched on. Flight and car hire search are not available online: those pages say so instead of searching. Book flights and car hire outside TravelFlow and capture them manually.
Hotel Search Returns No Results
An empty hotel result set has two very different causes, and the screen looks the same for both: either the destination text could not be matched to a region, or the region matched but has no availability for those dates. Work through them in order:
- Re-type the destination and pick a suggestion rather than typing free text, and try the nearest large city or a different spelling.
- Shift the check-in and check-out dates by a day or two — short-notice and peak-season dates are often genuinely sold out.
- Reduce guest and room counts, then add them back. Large parties and multi-room requests narrow availability sharply.
- Relax filters such as star rating or price before concluding that the destination has no inventory.
Slow Searches and “Too many requests”
A hotel search is a live call to the supplier, and TravelFlow allows it up to about 45 seconds before giving up and showing “Failed to search hotels. Please try again.” Hotel search is also limited to 20 searches per minute per user; past that the request is rejected with “Too many requests” and “Rate limit exceeded. Please try again later.” Repeatedly re-running the same search therefore makes things worse, not faster — wait for the result, and wait a minute after a rate-limit message.
Currency of Search Results
There is no currency selector in the search screens. Searches are sent in South African Rand by default and each result is labelled with the currency the supplier returned for that rate. TravelFlow does not convert supplier prices, so a price is always shown in the currency it was quoted in. On a sandbox deployment the supplier is queried in EUR, which is why test results can come back priced in euros.
Prices That Change Before Booking
Supplier prices are live quotes. If the price moves when the rate is pre-booked, the finalization screen shows Price has changed with the old and new amounts and two choices: Accept new price & continue or Decline. Separately, a pre-booked rate is only valid for a fixed window; once it lapses the booking is blocked outright and the rate has to be re-selected. See the Booking Stuck or Rate Expired article.