Independent industry evidence
Travel shopping already operates at volumes where fewer API calls matter.
IATA's 2019 scalability study reported OTA and metasearch look-to-book ratios of roughly 1,000–10,000+:1 shopping requests per booking. Agentic travel adds another source of iterative, automated search as AI travel agents explore and refine options on a traveller's behalf.
1,000–10,000+:1
OTA & metasearch look-to-book
IATA's 2019 scalability study reported roughly 1,000:1 in best cases and commonly above 10,000:1 for OTA and metasearch shopping.
IATA NDC Scalability Study · 2019 ↗100–300:1
Airline-direct look-to-book
IATA's 2019 scalability study contrasted OTA and metasearch volumes with roughly 100–300 shopping requests per booking on airlines' own websites.
IATA NDC Scalability Study · 2019 ↗150+
Tool calls in long-horizon agentic travel
TRIP-Bench reports realistic long-horizon travel dialogues that can involve more than 150 tool calls across 18 travel tools.
TRIP-Bench · 2026 ↗Look-to-book is an industry shopping-to-booking ratio, not a claim that one traveller request creates 1,000–10,000 HTTP calls. TRIP-Bench separately reports 150+ tool calls in realistic long-horizon travel dialogues; those calls span travel tools and are not flight-supplier calls alone.