Recommendations Released for Future of Hotel Distribution Connectivity Standards
HTNG’s Next Generation Distribution Messaging Workgroup has published a document of recommendations for the future direction of messaging standards development for travel distribution.
This workgroup, facilitated by HTNG, but with active participation from other industry standards bodies, such as the OpenTravel Alliance and the International Air Transport Association (IATA), was formed to identify and examine the connectivity of open source and proprietary messaging standards evolving in the travel industry.
This workgroup evaluated HTNG’s Lightweight Messaging, OpenTravel’s 2.0 Object Model and International Air Transport Association’s (IATA’s) New Distribution Capability (NDC).
The group has developed a point of view with potential benefits, impacts and alignment opportunities for OpenTravel Alliance, IATA and HTNG. This document lays out the background on these organizations, the future focus of the organizations, different industry perspectives and recommendations for what the hospitality industry should or could do.
As a result of the report, HTNG intends to continue working closely with the OpenTravel Alliance to synchronize distribution messaging and to collaborate and align with other organizations, such as IATA.
“The OpenTravel Alliance supports unified standards of interoperability to enable the consumer experience for end to end business and leisure travel,” said Mike Tinkey, CEO of OpenTravel. “OpenTravel continues to support all aspects of travel to connect distribution globally and applauds the recommendations of the workgroup to do the same.”
“Collaboration is key in the standards industry,” said Mike Blake, CEO of HTNG. “There is a need for HTNG, OpenTravel and IATA to collaborate in order to reduce the duplication of standards and the complexity that multiple standards for the same messaging would cause.”
The document is available to the public on HTNG’s Specifications by Product Type Webpage or can be downloaded directly here.