The OpenTravel Alliance (OTA) will play a role in the success of Hotel Booking Solutions Incorporated (HBSi) as they work to provide interoperability solutions to their travel industry partners.

Recognizing the roadblocks presented by an overabundance of proprietary interfaces, HBSi chose a more compelling route via OTA specifications. The use of OTA’s open standards enables HBSi’s customers to work with a greater number of partners as well as realize significant savings in the development and deployment of interfaces.

HBSi represents a strategic bridge between leading hotel and gaming suppliers and their ever-increasing network of sales distribution channels.

As a pioneer at the crossroads of revenue and channel management, HBSi strives to ensure customers maximize the revenue potential from each sales distribution channel. HBSi’s Demand GatewayTM connectivity platform and Demand ManagerTM application offer customers a way to rapidly and inexpensively connect with multiple distribution channels enabling pricing based on real-time fluctuations in demand.

“The use of OTA specifications allows HBSi to speed up the time to develop and deploy interfaces,” says HBSi Interface Group Manager Stephen Burke. “By developing interfaces based on OTA messages, HBSi is able to interface to more trading partners in a more normalized format. That’s good news for HBSi and our customers.”

HBSi is tracking the benefits of using OTA specifications, tracking the costs and time associated with development and deployment of OTA-based interfaces compared to the costs and time related to non-OTA interface deployments. It’s also tracking the relative ease of OTA-based deployments and the resulting increase in competitive attractiveness.

Thus far, HBSi has implemented 15 message sets with encouraging results. It estimates an average OTA-based interface takes less than half the time to deploy as a non-OTA interface, expediting revenue gains and cost containment for HBSi’s customers. The company credits some of its success to working with some of the industry’s largest and most demanding companies to adopt the OTA open standard. Among those leaders, HBSi will use OTA interface specifications with trading partners such as Agilysys, Travelocity, Wyndham Worldwide, Sandals and Beaches Resorts, American Tours International and PAR Springer-Miller Systems.

As channel management gives way to the more sophisticated discipline of demand management, HBSi foresees a roadmap dotted with an ever increasing number and variety of trading partners desiring an easier and less costly route to realizing their full revenue potential.
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