# /safaribookings/destinations/search

`POST /api/safaribookings/destinations/search`

Price: 10 credits

Look up SafariBookings destinations by name: safari countries, parks and reserves, regions and circuits, towns, cities, villages, beaches, islands, lakes, rivers, mountains, airstrips and highlights. Each entry comes back with its full and short name, what kind of place it is, the safari type it is normally visited for, the chain of areas it sits inside from the immediate one up to the country, every country it spans (cross-border places such as the Zambezi River belong to several), its alternative spellings and the slug to use as the destination filter of the tour and operator search.

## How to use it

Resolve a place name to a SafariBookings destination slug. Leave keyword empty for the full catalogue of safari destinations. Each entry has id, name, short_name, kind (Park, Town, City, Beach, Region, Highlight, Country, ...), default_activity (Safari, Tour, Gorilla, Chimp, Climbing, Beach), region and region_path (the full chain of parent areas, innermost first, e.g. ['Southern Serengeti NP', 'Serengeti NP', 'Northern Circuit'] — every level is itself a destination in this catalogue), country and countries with country_alias and country_aliases (a cross-border place lists every country it spans, primary first), is_main_country on country entries, aliases, alias and destination_url. Feed alias into the destination field of safaribookings/tours/search and safaribookings/operators/search; entries with alias null have no landing page and cannot be used as a filter.

## Parameters

- `access-token` (string, required)

## Request body

- `timeout` (integer) — Max scrapping execution timeout (in seconds) (default: 300; min: 20; max: 1500)
- `keyword` (string) — Text to match against destination names and their alternative spellings (default: "")
- `count` (integer, required) — Max number of destinations to return (min: 1)

## Response

### 200 — Successful Response

- `@type` (string) (default: "SafaribookingsDestination")
- `id` (string, required)
- `name` (string, required)
- `short_name` (string, nullable)
- `kind` (string, nullable)
- `default_activity` (string, nullable)
- `region` (string, nullable)
- `region_path` (array) (default: [])
- `country` (string, nullable)
- `countries` (array) (default: [])
- `country_alias` (string, nullable)
- `country_aliases` (array) (default: [])
- `is_main_country` (boolean, nullable)
- `aliases` (array) (default: [])
- `alias` (string, nullable)
- `destination_url` (string, nullable)

## Errors

### 422 — Validation Error

The request body did not validate

What to do: Check the fields against this schema. A URN with the wrong prefix is the most common cause.

- `detail` (array)
  - `loc` (array, required)
  - `msg` (string, required)
  - `type` (string, required)
  - `input` (any)
  - `ctx` (object)

### 408

The request ran past its time limit

What to do: Raise `timeout` in the request body, up to the maximum this endpoint documents. Lowering `count` or turning off the `with_*` flags also helps, because less work finishes sooner.

### 412

The entity was not found, or a precondition failed

What to do: Retrying will not help: either the entity does not exist, or the input points at a different one.

### 429

Too many requests: a rate limit or a usage window is exhausted

What to do: When the response carries an X-Retry-After header, wait that many seconds and retry: the same number is in the body as `detail.retry_after`, and the limit clears once that window passes. The message in the body names the limit that was hit.

### 500

Something broke on our side

What to do: Retrying will not help. If it keeps happening, send us the X-Request-ID from the response headers.

### 529

Rate limit reached, or the endpoint is overloaded

What to do: Wait at least 30 seconds, then retry.

## Response envelope

Success: Array of objects (may be empty if no results)

Error: Error may coexist with partial results if it occurs mid-execution. Check X-Error header and status code.

Every response carries these headers:

- `X-Error` — Error message text (present only on error)
- `X-Request-ID` — Unique request identifier
- `X-Execution-Time` — Execution time in seconds
- `X-Result-Count` — How many records the body carries. 0 means an empty result, which is a normal answer and not by itself an error. A non-zero count can come back together with X-Error when the failure happened partway through — read this header and X-Error independently.
- `X-Total-Available-Results` — How many records exist for this query, when the endpoint can say. On a `dry_run` request this is the answer and the body is empty. It saturates: the endpoint's documented maximum means 'at least that many', any smaller number is exact.
- `X-Warning` — Present when the request body carried keys this endpoint does not document. They were ignored, so any filter you meant to apply through them did not apply. Check the spelling against this schema and retry.
- `X-Retry-After` — Seconds to wait before retrying. Present only on 429.