--- url: https://talkjs.com/use-cases/travel-booking-marketplace-chat/ title: "In-app chat SDK for travel booking marketplaces | TalkJS" --- For AI agents: Find a documentation index at https://talkjs.com/llms.txt (full content at https://talkjs.com/llms-full.txt). Get a markdown version of any page by appending .md to its URL path. [Skip to content](https://talkjs.com/use-cases/travel-booking-marketplace-chat/#main-content) Travel marketplaces # In-app chat for travel and tour booking marketplaces TalkJS is a [chat API](https://talkjs.com/build/chat-api/) and SDK with a ready-made chat UI for travel booking marketplaces. Travelers message guides, hosts and tour operators in your web or mobile app, before and after they book. Each conversation belongs to a booking, contact details can stay hidden until it’s confirmed, and we store and deliver every message. [Try for free](https://talkjs.com/dashboard/signup/premium/)[Contact sales](https://talkjs.com/contact/) ![Traveler](https://talkjs.com/core/avatars/avatar-3.jpg) Hi Ana! Is your Alfama tour OK for kids? 09:12 ![You](https://talkjs.com/core/avatars/avatar-10.jpg) Yes, kids love it. It’s about three hours with plenty of stops. Shall I hold the morning for you? 09:20 ![Traveler](https://talkjs.com/core/avatars/avatar-3.jpg) Great, the morning works for us. 09:22 Reply to the traveler... ![Ana](https://talkjs.com/core/avatars/avatar-10.jpg) Your tour is booked Saturday, June 14 Private walking tour of AlfamaMeet at Miradouro de Santa Luzia9:00 to 12:00 09:31 ![Ana](https://talkjs.com/core/avatars/avatar-10.jpg) Booked! I’ll wait by the tiled wall at the viewpoint. See you Saturday. 09:32 Reply to Ana... ## Traveler and guide messaging for every booking In a travel marketplace, the conversation is where a traveler decides to book. Give each inquiry or booking its own conversation, so the questions, the answers and the booking details stay together. GetYourGuide built its [supplier inbox](https://www.getyourguide.supply/articles/introducing-messages-every-customer-conversation-in-one-place) the same way: “Each message sits next to its booking”. 1. A traveler sends an inquiry about a tour. Your server creates a conversation for it with one REST API call. The tour’s name and photo become the conversation’s subject and photo, and your booking ID goes in as custom data. 2. The guide answers in that conversation. Your app posts updates such as “Booking confirmed” as system messages, which everyone in the conversation sees. 3. When we email someone about a message they missed, the email can link to the booking page in your app. 4. After the tour, set each participant’s access to read-only. They can still read the history, but nobody can post. For a group tour, add every traveler to one group conversation: up to 100 participants on the Basic plan and 300 on Growth. [Conversation data in the REST API](https://talkjs.com/docs/REST_API/Conversations/) ![Guide](https://talkjs.com/core/avatars/avatar-12.jpg) Thanks for booking! Here are the details for your food tour. 14:05 ![Guide](https://talkjs.com/core/avatars/avatar-12.jpg) Street food tour, 4 travelers Friday, September 5 Meeting pointFront gate of the market hall18:30 Tour endsRiverside night market21:30 14:06 ![You](https://talkjs.com/core/avatars/avatar-1.jpg) Perfect. One of us is vegetarian, is that OK? 14:12 ![Guide](https://talkjs.com/core/avatars/avatar-12.jpg) Of course. I’ll pick vegetarian stalls for that stop. 14:15 Write a message... ## Mask contact details in marketplace chat until the booking is confirmed Once a guide has a traveler’s phone number, the next trip can be booked without you. That’s why travel marketplaces keep the first conversations on their own platform, and put it in their terms. Travelers on ToursByLocals agree [not to give guides](https://www.toursbylocals.com/policy/terms-and-conditions) “any personal contact details including full name, phone number, email, and/or social networks” before booking, and Vrbo’s [offline booking policy](https://www.vrbo.com/tlp/trust-and-safety/offline-booking-policy) bans hosts from sharing “contact details that are intended to redirect guests away from Vrbo”. TalkJS can hide email addresses, phone numbers and links in messages from the roles you choose, such as travelers and guides. Each one is replaced with “(hidden information)”, the rest of the message is delivered, and the details stay hidden in notifications too. Once the booking is confirmed, you make one REST API call per participant. Then that traveler and that guide see each other’s details, in their conversation only. Masking is included on every plan. [See what each side sees in marketplace chat](https://talkjs.com/use-cases/buyer-seller-chat-online-marketplaces/)[How to unmask contact details per conversation](https://talkjs.com/docs/Guides/Control_Content_Masking/) Case study: ToursByLocals Inquiry-to-booking conversion at ToursByLocals rose roughly 15% after the move to TalkJS ToursByLocals is a private tour marketplace that connects travelers with local guides in more than 180 countries. After 17 years on a chat system it built itself, it moved its messaging to TalkJS in about two months, with its full message history, zero downtime and zero data loss. Guides and travelers now see the booking details next to the chat. Conversion had been flat before the move, and the rise came in the first full period after launch. > “Integrating TalkJS has given us a stable, monitored, and scalable messaging surface we can keep building on.” > > Sebastian Leder, Senior Product Manager, ToursByLocals [Read the ToursByLocals case study](https://talkjs.com/resources/toursbylocals/) ## Chat features for travel booking platforms ### Translate messages between travelers and guides On the Growth and Enterprise plans, TalkJS translates user messages in real time with the Google Cloud Translation API, using your own API key. Translation is charged separately. Each reader can turn translation on for a conversation and switch back to the original. It works in the Classic JavaScript SDK, React Native and Flutter. System messages aren’t translated, so send booking updates in the traveler’s language. The chat UI itself comes in more than 30 languages, set per user, and switches to a right-to-left layout for languages such as Arabic and Hebrew. [Language support and translation](https://talkjs.com/docs/Features/Language_Support/) ### Share tickets, itineraries and meeting points Turn on file sharing for a role, and travelers and guides can send PDFs, images, Word documents and calendar (.ics) files, up to 100 MB each. Location sharing sends a meeting point as a pin with a Google Maps link. Voice messages are there for a quick note from the road. [How location sharing works](https://talkjs.com/docs/Features/Messages/Location_Sharing/) ### Add chat to your web and mobile apps Use our ready-made chat UI for React, React Native, Flutter or Web Components, or build your own UI on our Data APIs for JavaScript, Kotlin and Swift. Moving off a chat you built yourself? Import your users, conversations and messages, with their original timestamps, through the REST API. [Read the docs to get started](https://talkjs.com/docs/UI_Components/)[Import your message history](https://talkjs.com/docs/REST_API/Import_Messages/) ## Travel booking chat notifications by email, push and SMS A traveler on the road isn’t watching your app, and a question about tomorrow’s meeting point can’t wait until they open it. When a traveler or guide is offline, we email them after a delay you set, up to 15 minutes, with the messages they missed in one email. They hit reply, and the answer shows up in the chat. You can also send mobile push notifications through APNs and FCM, with guides for React Native and Flutter. SMS works too, and it’s charged separately. [Explore notifications](https://talkjs.com/features/notifications/) Travel app 2 min Ana replied about your Lisbon tour See you Saturday at 9:00! Travel app 1 h Ana shared the meeting point Miradouro de Santa Luzia, by the tiled wall. Travel app 3 h Ana sent you a file Tram tickets for Saturday.pdf ## Travel marketplace chat pricing We price TalkJS per monthly active user, with unlimited conversations, messages and message history, so a long back-and-forth about an itinerary costs you the same as a one-line question. Basic is $279 a month with 10,000 monthly active users included, Growth is $569 a month with 25,000 and adds message translation, and Enterprise is custom. Every plan includes a free development mode, so you can build and test your chat before you pay. See [pricing](https://talkjs.com/pricing/) for what each plan includes, or compare TalkJS with [other chat APIs](https://talkjs.com/compare/). ## FAQs Can I export the chat between a traveler and a guide, for example in a dispute? Yes. The REST API lists every conversation in your app and the messages in each one, so you can pull the full history of one booking’s conversation or export all of your chat data. Can I use TalkJS for hotel or vacation rental guest messaging? Yes. Swap the tour for a reservation and the guide for a host: one conversation per stay, between the guest and the host, and the rest works the same way.