Capture
The act of collecting or submitting for settlement an amount that was previously authorized. Booking and payment should be tracked as separate state machines.
Why it matters
Transaction concepts describe how a metasearch click becomes a downstream booking experience. Without context-preserving links, durable click identity, booking lifecycle events and reconciliation, search performance becomes disconnected from actual commercial outcomes.
What does it look like in practice?
A metasearch click ID travels through the deeplink, returns with booking events and is reconciled through cancellation/stay states. Breaking this lineage creates commercial attribution gaps.
Implementation questions
- Is search context preserved on the landing page?
- Is there a durable ID from click to booking?
- Are booking lifecycle events idempotent?
- Is provider state reconciled with internal state?
Common mistakes
- Treating a generic landing page as successful handoff
- Treating unknown booking state as failed
- Counting replayed conversions twice
Where does it appear in the travel stack?
Capture commonly appears across transaction layers. Its implementation should make source-of-truth, identity, freshness and transaction-ownership boundaries explicit.
Related terms
Related technical guides
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