The OpenTravel Alliance (OTA), the travel industry’s leading specification development organization, sets the standard in providing real value to its members who implement OTA messages, including hospitality reservation and property management system providers.

In today’s dynamic distribution environment, ensuring the prompt delivery of reservations is of paramount concern to the hotel operator. This business problem was one shared by hotels throughout the world, and by SoftBrands, a leading provider of central reservation and property management systems (PMS) for the hospitality industry. Hotels received hundreds of reservations via fax on a nightly basis from Expedia, and costs were high for both Expedia and the properties. Expedia had the labor and telecommunications costs associated with the faxing of each reservation to the property, while the property suffered from elevated labor and opportunity costs associated with re-entering the reservations into the PMS, along with mistakes made during the re- key process.

Two years ago, in confronting this common business problem, SoftBrands decided upon a comprehensive and increasingly common solution - to implement the OpenTravel Alliance (OTA) XML specification. SoftBrands’ decision was based upon a number of factors, the most compelling of which were the two business benefits of lower costs and business process improvement, not only for Softbrands but for its customers as well.

“Implementation of the SoftBrands/Expedia OTA-based interface at all ten of our properties has truly streamlined the reservation process by eliminating manual input it has improved accuracy, saved on labor costs as well as telecommunication costs,” said Kevin Kim, Call Center Manager of The Kor Hotel Group. “Resources previously engaged in re-keying and double checking manual reservation are now free to pursue other revenue producing tasks.”

SoftBrands wanted to help its customers without having to build yet another proprietary interface to a third party vendor. The company felt it simply no longer made business sense to develop a costly closed interface that could only be used once. The solution lay partially in taking advantage of the near universal access to the Internet and related technologies, and in XML messaging utilizing web services. However, a point-to-point web services integration was deemed to be little better. Accordingly, the decision was made to utilize the open standards-based OTA specification.

The OTA specification met all of SoftBrands’ development criteria. In addition, the specification allowed SoftBrands and Expedia to interface their applications natively while taking advantage of open standards which allowed both companies to re-use parts of the development for other applications. The OTA specification clearly defined a standard message set for reservation delivery. Importantly, utilizing the OTA specification allowed the SoftBrands' development team to speed up development exponentially, resulting in significant savings for the company, its customers and its partners. Lastly, SoftBrands has been able to leverage the interface with several other customers and partners as adoption of the OTA specification becomes increasingly pervasive throughout the industry.

* This development was done by Hotel Information Systems (HIS) prior to the acquisition by SoftBrands in August of 2006

About the OpenTravel Alliance | The OpenTravel Alliance is passionate about solving the problems inherent with connecting multiple systems within the complex travel distribution arena.

The OTA's mission is to engineer specifications that make data transmission flow smoothly throughout travel, tourism and hospitality. The OTA creates, expands and drives adoption of open universal data specifications, including but not limited to the use of XML, for the electronic exchange of business information among all sectors of the travel industry.

With a diversified membership representing influential names in all sectors of the travel industry, OTA is comprised of representatives from airlines, car rental firms, hotels, cruise lines, leisure suppliers, service providers, tour operators, travel agencies, and trade associations. Thousands of OTA message structures are in use, carrying tens of millions of messages between trading partners every day.

For more information, visit .

About Softbrands | SoftBrands, Inc. is a leader in providing software solutions for businesses in the manufacturing and hospitality industries worldwide. The company has established a global infrastructure for distribution, development and support of enterprise software, and has approximately 5,000 customers in more than 100 countries actively using its manufacturing and hospitality products. SoftBrands, which has nearly 900 employees, is headquartered in Minneapolis, Minn., with branch offices in Europe, India, Asia, Australia and Africa. Additional information can be found at . To learn more, call (800) 497-0532.

Valyn Perini
Executive Director
+1 978 266 0032
OpenTravel Alliance