Holibob, the e-commerce engine for experiences, today announced the launch of the Holibob SDK, a free developer toolkit that removes the single biggest barrier to entry in the experiences category: the engineering time it has always taken to build a bookable storefront. Brands can now embed one into their own website in as little as three days, down from the roughly six months a native integration into a things-to-do catalogue has typically required.
The SDK ships as a small set of web components and a lightweight server proxy that a developer downloads, configures with two credentials, and runs locally from three commands. What results is a working storefront, search, results, a product page and checkout, connected to Holibob’s live catalogue from the first minute, running against free sandbox credentials that take real end-to-end test bookings with no supplier ever contacted and no payment ever charged. Going live requires no further engineering: the same credentials, proxy and code start taking real bookings once a commercial agreement is in place.
The launch addresses a gap that has kept many travel brands out of the experiences category altogether. In-destination spend, the money travellers already spend on tours,
activities, live events and dining once they arrive, is estimated at £300bn globally and is the fastest-growing segment in travel, with 70% of activity bookings made within a week of the trip itself, yet most of it currently leaks to concierges, local reps and third-party apps rather than the travel brand that already holds the customer relationship. Holibob’s own data shows partners offering in-destination experiences see a 35% higher repeat holiday booking rate among customers who book one, and a modelled £200,000 in incremental revenue per 1,000,000 marketable consumers.
Until now, reaching that opportunity meant choosing between Holibob’s existing storefronts, widgets and portals, or building directly against Holibob’s Partner API, all proven, all still requiring a place on an engineering roadmap to adopt. The SDK is not a lighter or simplified alternative to that API: it is the same API, delivered pre-built, so a brand gets everything Holibob already offers without the roadmap line that has stopped most teams from ever committing to build it. That is what makes this launch market-changing: the barrier to the experiences category was never demand, it was engineering time, and the SDK is the first Holibob product built specifically to remove it.
Holibob’s catalogue, available to any partner through the new SDK, spans more than 500,000 live bookable products, including tours and attractions, live events, and restaurants and dining, aggregated from over 45 API partners alongside direct supplier contracts.
“Every travel brand we talk to already agrees the opportunity is real. What’s stopped most of them acting on it is a six-month line on an engineering roadmap that never quite makes the cut,” said Craig Everett, CEO and Co-Founder of Holibob. “The SDK removes that line entirely. A developer can have a real, working storefront running before the next roadmap review, and the business can see and test the whole thing before a single commercial conversation happens. This is the product that finally makes the experiences opportunity a build decision instead of a budget one, and for most brands, it was never demand that was missing. It was the build.”
A deeper technical walkthrough of how the SDK works, including its architecture and how it relates to Holibob’s Partner API, is available on the Holibob blog: “Three Days, Not Six Months: Introducing the Holibob SDK”
The Holibob SDK is available now, with full documentation, an interactive demo and sandbox access, at demo.holibob.tech/solutions/holibob-sdk/documentation.
