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Two of the most-requested bedbank APIs, built on completely different models. Hotelbeds contracts hotels directly; RateHawk aggregates 330+ suppliers into one feed. That single difference shapes coverage, pricing, regional strength and how you should use each. Here is the honest comparison.
“Hotelbeds or RateHawk?” is one of the most common supplier questions an OTA faces — and it is usually asked as if the two are interchangeable. They are not. They sit at different layers of hotel distribution, and picking between them on inventory size alone leads to the wrong answer.
Hotelbeds is a direct bedbank: it signs contracts with hotels and resells that inventory at net rates. RateHawk, from Emerging Travel Group, is an aggregating bedbank — the RateHawk hotel API pulls together 330+ underlying suppliers, including other bedbanks, into a single feed. That structural difference explains almost every practical trade-off below: why their coverage numbers are not comparable, why their regional strengths barely overlap, and why “which is bigger” is the wrong first question. The right one is “which inventory do my travellers actually book” — and for most OTAs, the answer involves both.
The models are the whole story. Hotelbeds is a direct bedbank — part of HBX Group, it contracts room inventory directly from hotels and, through the acquisitions of Tourico Holidays and GTA, holds direct relationships with major chains including IHG, Hilton, Sheraton and Hyatt, as documented in AltexSoft’s hands-on Hotelbeds integration review. When you book a Hotelbeds rate, you are booking inventory Hotelbeds contracted itself.
RateHawk is an aggregating bedbank. Emerging Travel Group built it by aggregating 330+ suppliers — other bedbanks, wholesalers and direct hotel contracts — into one API. RateHawk holds 220K+ direct contracts of its own, but the bulk of its 2.9M+ accommodation count comes from re-aggregated supply. That makes RateHawk something like a mini-aggregator you reach through a single integration: broad, fast to onboard, but with inventory that overlaps whatever other bedbanks you already run.
On a spec sheet RateHawk dwarfs Hotelbeds — 2.9M+ accommodations against 300K+. But the numbers measure different things. Hotelbeds’ 300,000+ hotels across 195+ countries are largely directly contracted, unique inventory; AltexSoft’s breakdown puts roughly 70,000 in the Americas, 130,000 in Europe, and 100,000 across the Middle East, Africa and Asia-Pacific. RateHawk’s 2.9M+ is an aggregated figure that includes long-tail properties, apartments and re-sold bedbank supply — much of which you may already reach through another supplier.
The practical reading: Hotelbeds gives you depth of directly contracted rates in its strong regions, while RateHawk gives you breadth, including thin-coverage markets other bedbanks miss. Neither number tells you about overlap — and overlap is what actually decides whether adding a second supplier grows your bookable inventory or just duplicates it. That deduplication problem is the single biggest operational cost of running both, and the focus of the free report linked below.
Regional strength is where the choice gets real, because the two barely overlap. Hotelbeds is strongest in Europe, the Mediterranean, beach and leisure destinations, and Latin America — the depth in these markets is why leisure-focused OTAs and package platforms treat it as a default. Its direct chain relationships also make it reliable for brand-trusted city and resort inventory.
RateHawk is strongest exactly where Western bedbanks are thin — the CIS, Central Asia, Russia and parts of the Middle East, with 220K+ properties in the CIS alone and support across 32+ languages. For an OTA serving travellers into or out of those markets, RateHawk reaches inventory Hotelbeds simply does not carry. This is the core insight: their maps of strength are almost complementary, not competitive. Choosing one over the other on regional grounds usually means you have a single dominant market; serving several means you likely want both.
Both are fundamentally net-rate suppliers: you receive a wholesale price and set your own markup, which gives full margin control but requires working capital, since net-rate models typically mean you settle with the supplier rather than collecting commission afterwards. Hotelbeds is net-rate throughout. RateHawk is more flexible on paper — alongside net rates it offers commission and affiliate models, and it requires no IATA licence to begin, which lowers the barrier for newer platforms. For a growing OTA the trade-off is familiar: net rates maximise margin but tie up cash, while commission models ease cash flow at the cost of pricing control. Neither supplier removes that trade-off; RateHawk simply gives you more than one way to take it.
Both expose modern REST/JSON APIs, but the integration realities differ. Hotelbeds’ APItude suite splits into Booking, Content and Cache APIs, uses SHA-256 signature authentication, and — importantly — requires a formal certification process that ends with placing a real advance booking before you go live. AltexSoft’s team notes the sandbox is capped at 50 requests per day, so content must be pulled in batches and stored locally. RateHawk uses REST/JSON with API-key auth (and HMAC signatures on secure operations), no IATA requirement, and onboarding in as little as one to two weeks. In both cases, the certification, mapping, content storage and ongoing maintenance are real engineering commitments — and they recur for every supplier you add directly. That per-supplier cost is exactly what the build-vs-buy math below turns on.
| Dimension | Hotelbeds | RateHawk |
|---|---|---|
| Model | Direct bedbank | Aggregating bedbank (330+ suppliers) |
| Inventory | 300K+ hotels, largely direct-contracted | 2.9M+ accommodations (aggregated); 220K+ direct |
| Countries / reach | 195+ countries | Global; 32+ languages |
| Regional strength | Europe, Mediterranean, LATAM, chains | CIS, Central Asia, MEA, emerging markets |
| Rate models | Net rate | Net, commission & affiliate |
| IATA required | Standard commercial onboarding | No IATA required |
| Auth | SHA-256 signature (APItude) | API key + HMAC on secure ops |
| Best for | Leisure/package OTAs, European depth | Fast launches, emerging-market depth |
Figures reflect each supplier’s current published positioning. Where a single supplier’s number looks unusually large, remember it may be an aggregated count rather than directly contracted inventory.
Decide by market, not by inventory count. Choose Hotelbeds if your travellers book Europe, the Mediterranean, Latin America or brand-name chains, and you want deep directly contracted rates in those regions — this is the Hotelbeds hotel API sweet spot. Choose RateHawk if you need fast onboarding, no IATA, or depth in the CIS, Central Asia and emerging markets where Hotelbeds is thin. Choose both — which is what most scaling OTAs actually need — if your travellers span those regions, because the inventories complement rather than duplicate each other.
The catch with “both” is operational: two direct integrations mean two certifications, two content pipelines, two maintenance burdens, and the deduplication headache of the same hotel arriving from both feeds under different IDs. That is precisely the point at which an aggregator stops being a convenience and becomes the cheaper path — one integration reaches both suppliers (and 100+ others), with the duplicate-listing problem resolved by a dedicated mapping partner so the same hotel shows once, best rate winning.
Both suppliers — plus 100+ more — live in days, deduplicated, on one normalised API.
Explore the Universal Hotel API →Related reading: The best hotel API providers in 2026 · Hotel API aggregator vs bedbank: what’s the difference?
By raw count, yes — RateHawk lists 2.9M+ accommodations against Hotelbeds’ 300K+. But the numbers are not like-for-like. RateHawk’s total is an aggregated figure spanning 330+ underlying suppliers, so much of it is re-sold inventory you might already reach elsewhere. Hotelbeds’ 300K+ are largely directly contracted, unique properties. Bigger on the spec sheet does not mean more additional bookable inventory once overlap is accounted for.
Hotelbeds is a direct bedbank that contracts hotels itself; RateHawk is an aggregating bedbank that resells 330+ suppliers through one API. This means Hotelbeds offers depth of directly contracted rates in its strong regions, while RateHawk offers breadth and reach into markets other bedbanks under-serve. It also means RateHawk’s inventory overlaps other suppliers more, whereas Hotelbeds’ is more uniquely its own.
For Europe and the Mediterranean specifically, Hotelbeds usually leads — it has deep directly contracted coverage and strong chain relationships across the region. RateHawk still adds value in European emerging markets and the CIS. A European leisure OTA that wants one supplier often starts with Hotelbeds; one serving Eastern Europe and the CIS as well typically wants both, reached through a single aggregator to avoid running two integrations.
If your travellers span Europe/Mediterranean and the CIS/emerging markets, yes — the two inventories complement rather than duplicate each other, so running both meaningfully widens what you can book. The cost of doing so directly is two integrations, two certifications and the deduplication of overlapping hotels. Reaching both through an aggregator removes that overhead: one integration, both suppliers, duplicates resolved automatically.
RateHawk can onboard in as little as one to two weeks and needs no IATA. Hotelbeds requires a formal certification that ends with a real advance test booking, so it typically takes longer. Either way, a single direct integration is only the start — content storage, deduplication and ongoing maintenance recur for every supplier you add. Reaching them through a pre-integrated aggregator compresses the whole process to days and removes the per-supplier maintenance entirely.
ZentrumHub is a published RateHawk Strategic Partner. Inherit the integration, ship deduplicated inventory day one, and skip the per-supplier build.
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