Teams Led By Rezgo, HP, IBM, Avis Budget, Marriott International
The OpenTravel Alliance (OpenTravel), the travel industry’s leading distribution specification/standards development organization, announces new projects ranging from functional enhancements to tours and activities to adding electronic miscellaneous document (EMD) information to support merchandising of additional services by airlines.
“As the travel industry comes out of the downturn, companies are refining business models to reflect economic changes and new service needs,” said Valyn Perini, executive director of OpenTravel. “Travel suppliers, along with their technology and distribution partners, come to OpenTravel to make sure their business needs are reflected in our standards so they can quickly and easily go to market with new products and services.”
The new work includes some segment-independent technical reference publications, and also ranges across several travel segments, including car rental, airline, and, led by Rezgo the tours and activities segment.
“The time is right for tour and activity companies to start distributing through wider and more open channels because we are seeing more and more reservation systems come on-line. To best serve this segment, those companies need tools to provide standard distribution connectors, not just for transactions but for content,” said Stephen Joyce, CEO of Rezgo. “By working with the leading reservation system providers to develop and promote standard messages we ensure that new entrants will also use the standards. By leading the way now, OpenTravel creates a lasting legacy of openness and interoperability that will have long term positive impacts on the tour and activity segment.”
Projects underway include:
- Increase the functionality of tour messages and complement existing OpenTravel messages with a richer set of information that can be exchanged with trading partners, including additional product and supplier information, led by Rezgo.
- Adding no-show fees and terms into car rental messages, led by Avis Budget.
- Enhancing several existing airline messages to include EMD-related data to support the distribution of optional products and services, led by HP.
- Several segment-independent projects are also underway in the architecture work group, including:
- Reliable Messaging Guidelines led by IBM
- Creating an OpenTravel Data Dictionary
- Namespace Usage in OpenTravel Schemas led by Marriott International
Upcoming OpenTravel Activities
OpenTravel’s annual Advisory Forum will be held April 26-28, 2010 at the Marriott Seattle Waterfront in Seattle, Washington. Topics range from Cloud Computing in the New Decade to The Impact of Structured Data on Search Results to ongoing discussions of the value and role of standards in the travel industry – click here for the full agenda.
About the OpenTravel Alliance
The OpenTravel Alliance is passionate about solving the problems inherent with connecting multiple systems within the complex travel distribution arena.
OpenTravel’s mission is to engineer specifications that make data transmission flow smoothly throughout travel, tourism and hospitality. OpenTravel creates, expands and drives adoption of open universal data specifications, including but not limited to the use of XML, for the electronic exchange of business information among all sectors of the travel industry.
With a
diversified membership representing influential names in all sectors of the travel industry, OpenTravel is comprised of representatives from airlines, car rental firms, hotels, cruise lines, leisure suppliers, service providers, tour operators, travel agencies, and trade associations. Thousands of message structures are in use, carrying tens of millions of messages between travel trading partners every day. For more information, visit
www.opentravel.org.
