What it is
A webhook is an automatic message one system sends to another the moment something happens. Instead of your app asking "anything new?" over and over (that's called polling), the other system tells you right away.
In your work · Hospitality & Tourism
The OTA calls the front desk, so the front desk doesn't keep calling the OTA. Without webhooks, your reservations team would refresh Booking.com and Agoda every few minutes to catch new bookings. With a webhook, the booking channel pushes each new reservation to your system the second the guest pays. Checking the signature is like confirming a voucher really came from the agency before you hand over the room key, and handling duplicates is like making sure one booking doesn't become two rooms on the night audit.
When you'll meet it
- Connecting a booking engine, payment page or chat tool to something you built with an AI app builder
- A developer asks for your "webhook URL" so another service can send you updates
- A tool's settings page lists events like "payment.paid" or "booking.created" you can subscribe to
What to check
- Does your app check the message's signature, so strangers can't send fake bookings or fake payments?
- What happens if the same message arrives twice? (It will, sometimes.)
- What happens to messages sent while your app was down — are they retried?
- Is anything logged so you can see what arrived and when?
Say it like a pro
"Can the booking engine send us a webhook when a reservation is created, instead of us polling every five minutes?"