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 | A major contributor to this article appears to have a close connection with its subject.(June 2024) |
| Formation | 1999 |
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The OpenTravel Alliance is a not-for-profit trade association founded in 1999. [1]
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| A major contributor to this article appears to have a close connection with its subject.(June 2024) |
| Formation | 1999 |
|---|
The OpenTravel Alliance is a not-for-profit trade association founded in 1999. [1]
OpenTravel was founded in 1999 by a consortium of travel companies - including air, hotel, car rental, and supporting software companies - with a primary focus on the creation of electronic message structures to facilitate communication between the disparate systems in the global travel industry. The OpenTravel Alliance presented their concepts at its first OpenTravel Advisory Forum meeting on May 25, 1999, in Atlanta, Georgia. [2]
The driving force behind the adoption of an XML standard throughout the travel industry was the hopes of eliminating one of the major impediments blocking a full conversion to electronic tickets. Before the creation of OpenTravel messaging, passengers who with electronic tickets had to wait in line to receive a paper ticket from their initial airline if a flight has been canceled and they want to try to switch to another carrier. In addition, airline employees would need to fill out a handwritten "flight interruption manifest" for each ticketholder who's looking to rebook elsewhere. The adoption of an industry-standard setup based on XML allowed electronic tickets to be automatically transferred to another airline's system. [3]
In May 2017, OpenTravel added messaging to facilitate reserving golf tee times. Called the OpenTravel Golf 2.0 Standard Connection, the addition allowed golf courses to connect directly with distribution partners in hospitality, air, rental cars, tour operators, OTA’s, rail, by enabling faster, more efficient technical connections. [4]
In March 2016, the OpenTravel Alliance announced the release of OTA 2.0 object model solution, the next generation of open source messaging for consumer direct bookings. [5] OpenTravel’s 2.0 adds the ability to exchange JSON messaging to the existing XML capabilities. Version 1 of the specification was first released for public review in February 2000. [6]
OpenTravel's mission is to engineer specifications to ensure traveler and supplier information flow smoothly throughout travel, tourism and hospitality. OpenTravel creates, expands and drives adoption of open specifications, including but not limited to the use of XML, for the electronic exchange of business information among all sectors of the travel industry. [7] OpenTravel's schema design supports W3C, IATA and ISO standards.
Members of the OpenTravel Alliance include airlines, hotel companies, car rental companies, cruise lines, railways, global distribution systems, distribution companies, solutions providers, software developers and consultants.
Electronic data interchange (EDI) is the concept of businesses electronically communicating information that was traditionally communicated on paper, such as purchase orders, advance ship notices, and invoices. Technical standards for EDI exist to facilitate parties transacting such instruments without having to make special arrangements.
The International Airlines Travel Agent Network (IATAN) is a Miami-based trade association in the United States representing the interests of its member companies (airlines) and the U.S. travel distribution network. It is an independent department of the International Air Transport Association (IATA).
The Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards is a nonprofit consortium that works on the development, convergence, and adoption of projects - both open standards and open source - for Computer security, blockchain, Internet of things (IoT), emergency management, cloud computing, legal data exchange, energy, content technologies, and other areas.
Travelocity.com is an online travel agency owned by the American Expedia Group. It has 12.4 million monthly unique visitors, making it the third most popular website owned by Expedia Group, after Expedia.com and Hotels.com.
A travel agency is a private retailer or public service that provides travel and tourism-related services to the general public on behalf of accommodation or travel suppliers to offer different kinds of travelling packages for each destination. Travel agencies can provide outdoor recreation, arranging logistics for luggage and medical items delivery for travellers upon request, public transport timetables, car rentals, and bureau de change services. Travel agencies can also serve as general sales agents for airlines that do not have offices in a specific region. A travel agency's main function is to act as an agent, selling travel products and services on behalf of a supplier. They are also called Travel Advisors. They do not keep inventory in-hand unless they have pre-booked hotel rooms or cabins on a cruise ship for a group travel event such as a wedding, honeymoon, or other group event.
An invoice, bill or tab is a commercial document issued by a seller to a buyer relating to a sale transaction and indicating the products, quantities, and agreed-upon prices for products or services the seller had provided the buyer.
Accor S.A. is a French multinational hospitality company that owns, manages and franchises hotels, resorts and vacation properties. It is the largest hospitality company in Europe, and the sixth largest hospitality company worldwide.
Sabre Corporation, a travel technology company headquartered in Southlake, Texas, is the largest global distribution systems (GDS) provider for air bookings. The company's primary product, the Sabre Global Distribution System, and others like it, act as neutral intermediaries, connecting travel suppliers like airlines and hotels with travel sellers like agencies. They offer real-time availability and pricing, making them important for corporate travel management.
Priceline.com is an online travel agency for finding discount rates for travel-related purchases such as airline tickets and hotel stays. The company facilitates the provision of travel services from its suppliers to its clients. Priceline.com is headquartered in Norwalk, Connecticut, United States and is wholly owned by Booking Holdings, which also owns Kayak.com, Booking.com and other sites. The company was founded in 1997. It operates in more than 200 countries and territories around the world and has partnerships with over 400 airlines and 300,000 hotels. Users can search for travel deals and discounts on the website, and in the past also offered the "Name Your Own Price" feature to bid on hotel rooms and flights.
A passenger name record (PNR) is a record in the database of a computer reservation system (CRS) that contains the itinerary for a passenger or a group of passengers travelling together. The concept of a PNR was first introduced by airlines that needed to exchange reservation information in case passengers required flights of multiple airlines to reach their destination ("interlining"). For this purpose, IATA and ATA have defined standards for interline messaging of PNR and other data through the "ATA/IATA Reservations Interline Message Procedures - Passenger" (AIRIMP). There is no general industry standard for the layout and content of a PNR. In practice, each CRS or hosting system has its own proprietary standards, although common industry needs, including the need to map PNR data easily to AIRIMP messages, has resulted in many general similarities in data content and format between all of the major systems.
Dynamic packaging is a method used in package holiday bookings to enable consumers to build their own package of flights, accommodation, and car rental instead of purchasing a pre-defined package. Dynamic packages differ from traditional package tours in that the pricing is always based on current availability, escorted group tours are rarely included, and trip-specific add-ons such as airport parking and show tickets are often available. Dynamic packages are similar in that often the air, hotel, and car rates are available only as part of a package or only from a specific seller. The term "dynamic packaging" is often used incorrectly to describe the less sophisticated process of interchanging various travel components within a package, however, this practice is more accurately described as "dynamic bundling". True dynamic packaging demands the automated recombination of travel components based on the inclusion of rules that not only dictate the content of the package but also conditional pricing rules based on various conditions such as the trip characteristics, suppliers contributing components, the channel of distribution, and terms of sale. Dynamic packages are primarily sold online, but online travel agencies will also sell by phone owing to the strong margins and high sale price of the product.
Amadeus IT Group, S.A. is a major Spanish multinational technology company that provides software solutions for the global travel and tourism industry. It is the world's leading provider of travel technology that focus on developing software for airlines, hotels, travel agencies, and other travel-related businesses to enhance their operations and customer experiences.
Hotwire is a travel website that offers airline tickets, hotel rooms, rental cars, and vacation packages. It operates by selling off unsold travel inventory at discounted prices. The company is headquartered in San Francisco, CA, Hotwire, Inc. is an operating company of the Expedia Group, which also operates the website ClassicVacations, Expedia, Hotels.com, Orbitz, Travelocity and Egencia.
A global distribution system (GDS) is a computerised network system owned or operated by a company that enables transactions between travel industry service providers, mainly airlines, hotels, car rental companies, and travel agencies. The GDS mainly uses real-time inventory from the service providers. Travel agencies traditionally relied on GDS for services, products and rates in order to provide travel-related services to the end consumers. Thus, a GDS can link services, rates and bookings consolidating products and services across all three travel sectors: i.e., airline reservations, hotel reservations, car rentals.
Hospitality Technology Next Generation (HTNG) is a global non-profit trade association serving hotel companies and technology providers.
Amadeus is a computer reservation system owned by the Amadeus IT Group with headquarters in Madrid, Spain. The central database is located at Erding, Germany. The major development centres are located in Sophia Antipolis (France), Bangalore (India), London (UK), and Boston. In addition to airlines, the CRS is also used to book train travel, cruises, car rental, ferry reservations, and hotel rooms. Amadeus also provides New Generation departure control systems to airlines. Amadeus IT Group is a transaction processor for the global travel and tourism industry. The company is structured around two key related areas—its global distribution system and its "IT Solutions" business area.
Corporate travel management is the function of managing a company’s strategic approach to travel, the negotiations with all vendors, day-to-day operation of the corporate travel program, traveler safety and security, credit-card management and travel and expenses ('T&E') data management.
TravelSky Technology Limited is the dominant provider of information technology services to the Chinese air travel and tourism industries. Its clients include airlines, airports, air travel suppliers, travel agencies, individual and corporate travel consumers and cargo services. It is listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange and its majority shareholder or parent group is the China TravelSky Holding Company, a State-owned enterprise (SOE).
CIPURSE is an open security standard for transit fare collection systems. It makes use of smart card technologies and additional security measures.
Trip.com is a multinational travel service conglomerate with 45,000 employees. It is one of the world's largest online travel agencies with over 400 million users worldwide, and also the parent of Skyscanner. It is headquartered in Singapore.