Letter: Prism Standards Deserve Proper Recognition
<B> Letter: Prism Standards Deserve Proper Recognition</B>
The article about Prism's White Paper (BTN, May 17) does not do justice to Michael Whitesage and his team at Prism. By drawing attention to the critical issue of data quality, they've been able to get this improved, for the benefit of every corporation that uses data from the GDS/agency channel to manage travel. This is a laudable achievement, and the industry should be encouraging Prism to maintain its efforts.
The issue of standards for data formatting is different. Until very recently, there was no general standard for representing data in a way that made it easy to add new data elements when requirements change: initiatives like that of Prism were the best way forward. The WorldWide Web Consortium's XML standard addresses the flexibility requirement, making it easy to extend a message or file record when this becomes desirable. This is one of the reasons why the OpenTravel Alliance is basing its standard on XML.
As chairman of the ad hoc Steering Committee of OTA's Non-Supplier Working Group, I was thus very pleased to have Dr. Whitesage summarize the White Paper at our initial meeting in Atlanta on May 24. The support we got from him and from some of the GDSs and travel agencies at the meeting, which also have good reason to know about the substantial difficulties involved in providing high quality yet flexible data, is a good foundation for the work we have to do.
Prism's offer of their Xport as input to the part of OTA's standard that relates to agency data exchange is a concrete and much appreciated contribution.
As it happens, Lanyon has a very similar quality problem in our own business. Our RFPassist software is being used by over 40 chains to prepare bids relating to over 30,000 hotel properties to corporations and agency consortia this year. It has to contend with a growing variety of formats that are mandated by the recipients of the data, many of which go beyond the fields specified by HEDNA and the NBTA.
Contending with the changing format requirements for some 800 fields makes it even harder to add facilities to help with the quality problem, though with the agencies' help we've made substantial progress on this.
On May 25, my colleague Brad Fred announced that as soon as OTA's XML standard is available, we will start work to support this with RFPassist, so that this will be able to both accept and deliver XML. Like Prism, we have undertaken to make our extended list of fields available to help OTA develop its standard.
XML makes it easier to use the same data for different purposes, so that hotel chains need maintain fewer databases. By using each of a smaller number of databases more, a chain will both save money and get better data quality. We will be helping this process through our PropertyVault strategy.
I'm glad the article stressed the twin problems of data quality and data formatting. With XML, OTA has the tool to do a much-needed job for Prism, Lanyon and the industry as a whole.
<i>Nick Lanyon
Chairman, Lanyon Inc.