OpenTravel Alliance Draws 250

<B> OpenTravel Alliance Draws 250</B>

By Mary Ann McNulty


<I>Atlanta</I> - The travel industry might not agree on tactics, but it certainly agrees on the need to develop travel technology messaging standards in the era of e-commerce, as evidenced by the more than 250 people who attended the first OpenTravel Alliance industry advisory forum here late last month.

Organizers were surprised by the turnout, given that the meeting conflicted with several industry events, including the Association of Corporate Travel Executives' annual meeting. "Not only were we pleased with the numbers, but with the wide range of participants. It was a good cross-representation of interested parties," said Mark Koehler, United's electronic distribution manager and ad hoc Alliance board member.

In attendance were representatives of the major global distribution systems and domestic airlines, foreign airlines, hotels, car rental companies, cruise lines, software companies, brick-and-mortar and online travel agencies, though organizers said they were unaware of any travel managers in the group.

The goal of the alliance is to allow suppliers and customers to more efficiently exchange data over the Internet by creating data identifiers in what is becoming the standard Internet computer language, eXtensible Markup Language or XML.

In the alliance, each travel sector will be responsible for developing its own set of data identifiers as part of a working group. The results then will be combined as the alliance agrees on one common set of tags for the entire travel industry. The first draft of this travel language, to be called OpenTravel 1.0, is expected by October, in time for vendors to use it in developing applications for release early next year. Examples of tags include name, address and frequent flyer number.

The Air Transport Association and Hotel Electronic Distribution Network are assisting the group, which expects to have 50 members and raise $350,000 in expenses in its first year. An association management firm and standards expert will be hired by July 6.

In a press briefing, Koehler said, "There was widespread agreement that Internet is here to stay, that XML is a good protocol that is growing in acceptance today."

Smaller software developers expressed concerns about the proposed membership fees, which range from $3,000 to $7,500, depending on company revenues. Those fees were developed, explained Continental's director of distribution strategy Jim Young, also an ad hoc board member, based on a pro forma budget of 50 members, and might be adjustable if industry interest runs high. The alliance has proposed two types of members, dues-paying members with voting rights and non-members who pay to attend meetings, but cannot vote. Anyone can submit comments to the alliance.

In terms of structure, the alliance has proposed an 11- member board, with five airline, three hotel, two car rental and one at-large member. Working groups include air, hotel and car, an "other" category for cruise, bus, rail, etc., and a non-supplier group for everyone else, including software developers. An interoperability committee with two representatives from each segment is charged with integrating the work of all the groups and defining the naming conventions for common data elements.

Participant Bruce Bishins, a former airline executive and now president of USTAR, expressed "deep concerns" about the proposal to allow air carriers to hold five of the 11 board positions, in effect giving that sector final approval over all alliance protocols, development and implementation. "This is hardly an open and equitable arrangement for any travel agency interests," he said. "The alliance is building itself in the image of the covert style typical of IATA and ATA proceedings. They pretend to be open and including all comers, but act with great exclusion and monopolization of processes, structure and interests. When all is said and done, the alliance will convince us that the industry has been well served by a democratic technical initiative, when in fact it was railroaded by airlines all the way."

Bishins railed that despite the 80 percent of the sales channel that agencies command, the alliance has confined them to the non-supplier group. "That simply won't cut it," he said. "We have no quarrel with the plan to improve and enhance message standards, but it must be an equitable and joint process."

That said, Bishins was elected to participate in the eight-member steering committee of the non-supplier working group.

Developed as an offshoot of the Air Transport Association's Electronic Marketplace Committee, the alliance was conceived more than a year ago. Although supporters have been meeting to rally support, ad hoc board members emphasized that "we've not created any standards as of yet. The most we've been doing is cataloguing or asking suppliers what information they have today," stressed Continental's Young.

Organizers noted that the travel industry needs to develop a uniform interface standard and limit the duplication of efforts that have dominated the industry and driven up distribution costs, which at 20 percent to 30 percent of sales dwarf the 5 percent to 11 percent average in other industries. The standard also would encourage development of applications that span the spectrum of suppliers, intermediaries and consumers; foster a multi-channel distribution strategy; and be the next step in the evolution of e-commerce.

A standard also could prove a big boon to the emerging airline alliances by providing a means to link their disparate computer systems, Young said. More immediately, it could help carriers interested in interlining electronic travel systems. "When we saw the opportunities that XML can present to us and realized we can move all the way from ResTeletype and Edifact, past EDI and into sentence-based, not word-based, messaging, we signed on," Young said.

But most important, according to organizers, are the benefits such common messaging might offer travelers in earning recognition by the disparate travel systems they might encounter along a journey. In a "traveler's tale" that Young recounted, a traveler to Johannesburg today might travel on three different airlines, rent a car and stay in three different hotels. But, since the systems don't effectively link today, none of the vendors would recognize him as a customer of the others, while "XML offers the opportunity to do this."

Following the administrative and technical overview, working groups spent the first afternoon drafting common elements of their data sets. Progress reports on the alliance are available on its Web site, www.opentravel.com.