Amadeus has announced it is opening one of its core technology frameworks - Amadeus ARIA Templates - to the open source community.

The move follows decisions by Travelport, which unveiled its own developer network opening up its Universal API in November 2011, and Sabre, which launched its Red App Center a few months earlier.

The Amadeus application framework, written in JavaScript, is set to “revolutionise” the way the travel industry builds new user interfaces, drastically easing the challenges associated with development of travel mobile apps, Amadeus said.

Over the previous three years Amadeus has been using the ARIA Templates framework internally to develop its professional web-based products including Altéa Reservation Desk Top Web, the internet based interface for airline reservation agents and Selling Platform Connect.

The ARIA framework also powers the latest releases of Amadeus’ consumer-facing mobile apps for the company’s airline customers.

ARIA Templates’ ability to support rich, enterprise-grade, high performance online and mobile applications means the travel industry can access reliable selling applications from internet browsers. Importantly, the approach also reduces the development cycle for new innovations as software updates can be rolled out in an instant.   

Denis Lacroix, vice president – product development, sales and e-commerce development, Amadeus said: “Opening our code to third party developers is a critical step to achieving our technology vision and ensures Amadeus customers will benefit from the widest possible range of development innovation.”

He continued: “Many of the world’s most successful applications are built to run on open-source platforms like Google’s Android.

“With this progressive move our selling interfaces are now open to clever ideas from around the world. In addition, the use of ARIA Templates within Amadeus is increasingly pervasive, with upcoming products in Hotel IT and Airport IT”.