Implementing traveler photos via the Viator API

Apr 22, 2021 | Affiliate API, Basic Access, Full Access, Merchant API, Travel Commerce Partners

Traveler photos are user-submitted photos, taken by travelers while they are participating in a Viator experience. In Viator’s partner APIs, traveler photos are differentiated from supplier-provided photos. Traveler photos are displayed separately, and can be accessed using a different set of requests.

Like reviews, traveler photos can provide social proof and create trustworthiness. Testing done by Viator indicates that when users interact with traveler photos, a 3% increase in revenue per visitor is experienced.

Including traveler photos in your API implementation is recommended as a best practice, and is required to achieve an excellent rating. 

Please refer to the below guide on how to include traveler photos in your experiences platform.

Where on my platform should I add traveler photos?

We recommend traveler photos be included on all product detail pages. Viator displays traveler photos in a separate carrousel, which can be toggled to from the provider photos carousel (see example). Some partners choose to display traveler photos and supplier photos in the same gallery or on different sections of their product detail page.

Traveler photos toggle

What sort of caching strategy can I implement for traveler photos?

Since traveler photos remain fairly static, it is considered a best practice to implement caching for traveler photos, rather than relying on live calls. Viator recommends a refresh scheduled once per 24 hour period.

Implementing traveler photos

Traveler photos may be found under the product/photos endpoint (V.1 and V.2). Please note that as this endpoint has been ported directly from V.1, some naming and other conventions may be different to what is expected – please review the specification carefully. Requests are made on a per-product basis.

Photos may be found in the “data” object, along with the caption and date of submission. We recommend including this information alongside all traveler photos.

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Key fields:

  • Caption” – A brief text description of the photo
  • timeUploaded” – The date of the photo’s submission
  • photoURL” – a URL containing the photo (see resolutions below)
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For each user photo, the API will return a:

  • 133×133 thumbnail image
  • 260×195 medium resolution image
  • The high resolution original submission. See example.

Response sample (condensed)

{
….
“caption”: “<p>Carl and Karen meeting a new friend at the Wildlife park.</p>”,
“thumbnailURL”: “http://cache-graphicslib.viator.com/graphicslib/media/e4/dsc00471-photo_1909732-133sq.jpg”,
….
“timeUploaded”: “2012-02-07”,
….
}

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