BookFlowGo: What Integration Really Takes

Integration is one of those words that gets thrown around easily. “We’ll just connect to the API.” “It’s a simple integration.” “We’ll plug it in.”

Anyone who’s lived through even one complex system integration in the travel tech industry knows how misleading that can be.

With Parkspace by BookFlowGo, we’ve delivered over a hundred integrations, from flight data and CRM to access control, valet systems and voice assistants. That scale has taught us a few things. Most importantly:

The technical connection is only the beginning. The real work is what happens when something changes, breaks, or isn’t built for scale, because when systems go wrong, the customer still expects it to work.

This post isn’t about selling a product. It’s a look behind the scenes at the operational and design realities that sit behind the integrations we all depend on, but rarely talk about.

Creating seamless journeys through connected systems.

In the early days, integrations were simple. A payment gateway. A refund endpoint. Job done.

Today? We integrate with:

• Valet check-in, staff tasking and multi-device booking flows.
• Flight APIs to automatically update parking bookings when flights are delayed or cancelled, like with our Air New Zealand loyalty project.
• Automated lounge access at Quebec, mirroring our ANPR systems for vehicles.
• Fast-track security gates at Bristol, linked to boarding pass data.
• Parking guidance platforms that reserve individual spaces and signal availability with custom lighting (e.g. purple for pre-booked customers).
• Voice-based bookings via Alexa.
• CRM-driven upsell journeys tailored to individual profiles.

Each one sounds neat on paper. Each one came with real-world complexity under the hood.

The real work starts after go-live

A well-documented API isn’t the whole story. These are the questions we ask up front to build resilient systems by design

• What happens when their system is offline?
• How does it fail: loudly, silently, inconsistently?
• Can we queue, cache, or re-serve the booking without the third party?
• How often do they change their interface without warning?

Some third-party systems aren’t designed for real-time volume. So we’ve built failovers, fallback logic and resilience by default. Not because we wanted to. Because we had to.

“Simple” integrations that caused real pain

One of the least technical problems? Marketing tags.

You add a third-party script to your booking pages to track conversion. Two years later, you’re no longer working with that partner but the tag’s still there. Still collecting data. Still sending it elsewhere.

We’ve seen this lead to data exposures, not through malice but through neglect. We treat every tag, tracker and third-party script as if it’s a potential integration risk. Because it is.

Experience teaches what documentation doesn’t

You don’t just need developers. You need operational muscle, support teams, QA, monitoring, rollback strategies and the judgment to know when “this looks fine” it might still break at 3 am.

That kind of muscle memory only comes from experience.

As an example when we integrate with a PARCS (Parking Access and Revenue Control System), we knew better than to assume the far end would always be available.

So we built for resilience:

Every booking is queued locally before it’s sent to the PARCS

If the supplier API is down, the booking waits but the customer doesn’t

Our system retries automatically, escalating to alerts only if retries fail

Monitoring dashboards give our ops team early visibility, often before the supplier even knows there’s a problem

The result?

• The customer arrives. The barrier lifts.
• The booking feels instant, even if the integration wasn’t.
• Support never needs to step in, because our experience already did.

This isn’t just integration. It’s judgment, experience and service design, forged from years of running live systems at scale.

Integration is what makes the experience invisible

When everything works, nobody notices. It feels seamless: The right car park space > The fast-track lane opens > The upsell email is relevant > The system adapts when your flight changes.

Customers never think about the integrations behind that. But we do. That’s the kind of invisible magic we aim for.

Let’s talk

If you’re working in travel tech, parking, mobility or any adjacent space where integrations are starting to sprawl, I’d love to compare notes.

What’s the toughest integration you’ve had to maintain long-term? Let us know.

About BookFlowGo

Drive more revenue from parking and ancillaries with BookFlowGo , the tailored airport solution for smarter bookings, seamless operations and standout customer experiences.

At BookFlowGo, we bring together the best in pre-booking, parking logistics and hardware innovation to help airports, cities and mobility hubs run smarter, more efficient parking operations.

We’re the power behind seamless parking. Whether it’s maximising revenue, optimising capacity or making parking effortless for travellers, we’ve got it covered. Our platform combines the expertise of Parkspace, ParkIT and Future Generation Services (FGS) to create a fully connected parking ecosystem that works better for operators and passengers alike.