CHICAGO (September 20, 2017) – 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 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.
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About Hospitality Technology Next Generation (HTNG)
The premier technology solutions association in the hospitality industry, HTNG is a self-funded, nonprofit organization with members from hospitality companies, technology vendors to hospitality, consultants, media and academic experts. HTNG’s members participate in focused workgroups to bring to market open solution sets addressing specific business problems. HTNG fosters the selection and adoption of existing open standards and also develops new open standards to meet the needs of the global hospitality industry.
Currently more than 400 corporate and individual members from across this spectrum, including world leading hospitality companies and technology vendors, are active HTNG participants. HTNG’s Board of Governors, consisting of 23 top IT leaders from hospitality companies around the world, itself has technology responsibility for over 2.5 million guest rooms and world-leading venues. HTNG publishes workgroup proceedings, drafts and specifications for all HTNG members as soon as they are created, encouraging rapid and broad adoption. HTNG releases specifications into the public domain as soon as they are ratified by the workgroups. For more information, visit www.htng.org.