The OpenTravel Alliance has formed nine project teams for the second half of 2008, dedicated to solving travel distribution business problems with XML schema.

Published: 07 Aug 2008

The OpenTravel Alliance has formed nine project teams for the second half of 2008, dedicated to solving travel distribution business problems with XML schema.

Sharing that standards have become even more important in an economic downturn, Valyn Perini, executive director of OpenTravel said travel companies must ensure their inventory is available wherever their customers want to book, and must do so while keeping costs down.

"Robust and reusable standards are the most effective solution for both those business issues," she said.

The work undertaken by these project teams ranges from content distribution for hotels and cruise lines to dynamic packaging messages for every travel segment, to unbundled selling for airlines, a project led by Air Canada.

Graham Wareham, General Manager Product Distribution, Air Canada, said, "Because OpenTravel's standards are so widely adopted, we can now forge new commercial partnerships with enhanced distribution of our products and services. The ability to generate ancillary revenues through channels beyond our own website is key to our distribution strategy."

The project Air Canada is leading will address the ability to offer additional services and discount options to the air traveler at time of reservation and to properly display these options at various points of a booking process.

Other projects underway include:

· Enhanced content distribution messages to better control the distribution and management of digital assets and other rich media, led by Starwood Hotels & Resorts.

· Adding additional elements to existing rental car messages to accommodate insurance rentals and to provide this information back to the insurance companies, led by Hertz.

· Creating dynamic packaging XML messages that consist of a hotel, car, and/or air component in a single transaction between the supplier and a trading partner, led by US Airways.

· Enhancing the current OpenTravel customer profile messages and extend the messages to handle advanced search. New schemas will be developed to handle merge operations, led by Amadeus.

· Creating a new schema to communicate an event's actual history, including meeting room setup needs, audiovisual needs, catering needs, safety and security needs, led by APEX.