apidays New York 2025 - Open Source and disrupting the travel distribution ecosystem by Stu Waldron (OpenTravel)

Open Source and disrupting the travel distribution ecosystem
Stu Waldron, Advisor & Acting Director at OpenTravel

apidays New York 2025
API Management for Surfing the Next Innovation Waves: GenAI and Open Banking
May 14 & 15, 2025

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Transcript

1. Open Source and disrupting the travel distribution ecosystem
2. Travel Distribution is stuck in the boombox era • 1980s: Physical media to move music ◦ Vinyl, tape and in 1982, CD (digital) ◦ Distribution controlled by record companies ◦ New artists locked out unless they sign with record company • 1990s: Digital formats emerging, but still physical media and record companies in control ◦ MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III) in 1991 • 2000s: Streaming arrives! ◦ Peer to peer streaming like Napster shows up in 2001, bypassing physical media ◦ By the end of the decade, retail outlets like Circuit City dependent on CD and DVD sales closing • 2010s onward: Distribution goes fully digital, business models change ◦ Record companies no longer the gate keepers
3. Travel Distribution is stuck in the boombox era • Complexity: For travel, the shear cost of product distribution is the limitation ◦ Basic air, car, hotel trip means 100s of bespoke APIs ◦ Price rules unpublished or through costly licensing ◦ Highly skilled staff required, if available • Cost: High cost of distribution is the gate keeper ◦ Smaller travel providers locked out of market as costs to connect exceed revenue • Digital: Open Travel founded 25 years ago ◦ Providing XML and JSON messages for digital movement of products ◦ Implemented chaotically • No Napster: Distribution works as it did 25 years ago ◦ Barriers to innovation to reduce the friction and cost
4. What the traveler deserves • Traveler: AI enabled, trip level solutions in an instant ◦ Experience led retail, “I want to see a play on Broadway”, propose a total solution, don’t make me construct it ◦ Only show me the solutions most relevant to me, know my preferences (AI based relevancy scoring) ◦ Give me a special deal across the total trip (suppliers all know who I am and their offers combinable) ◦ Protect my privacy following PI regulations and allow me to control my own data ◦ Provide me several solutions and don’t make me wait • What it takes: Orders of magnitude more actionable travel products in the cloud ◦ Ready to order without further messaging (digital retail) ◦ Trip level personalization and bundling ◦ Open-source, community driven solutions to handle solution management, security, identity and other needs consistently ◦ Rethinking distribution agreements
5. Solution Approach • Employ the proven open-source approach to deliver the needed data definitions and functions to create, publish, and manage offers ◦ Open, universal offers with user defined price and rules. ◦ Work with existing or new order management solutions ◦ Work with companies operating offer management (shopping cart) services • For all travel participants in retail ◦ Reduce significantly search (availability) costs ◦ Increased opportunity for aggregation of offers into bundled offers. ◦ Increased opportunity for personalization of offers. ◦ Increased travel content, as publishing costs come down, to enrich the travel experience
6. Solution Overview Creating the Open Travel Foundation
7. Open Travel Foundation Mission and Vision • Our Mission • Enhance the future of travel by enabling the transition of our travel industry members to digital retail supporting today’s app-based consumers demanding personalized solutions. • Empowering members via message standards, reference architectures, and reference implementations to support their efforts to move to modern APIs and cloud-based solitons that in turn support digital retail at scale. • Our Vision • OpenTravel is a cross-sector technology enabler for the travel community providing open-source support for ubiquitous offers capable of omnichannel personalization that will remove barriers to the publishing and consumption of travel products. • Any product, offered and sold on any channel, while conveying the supplier’s price and rules.
8. Open Travel Foundation Value Proposition • Cost Reduction ◦ Define all common travel retail data and functions as extendable Java friendly object models from which tooling will generate ready to publish APIs (labor reduction) ◦ Provide open-source functions for offer management to eliminate redundant API work across the industry (labor reduction) ◦ Highly automated API consumption (labor reduction, faster time to market) • Revenue Enhancement ◦ Open offer container that can sell any product, obeying the supplier's price and rules, on any channel to bring new products to market quickly (net new revenue) ◦ Bundling of offers as a trip to support experience level retailing (revenue enhancement) ◦ Omnichannel personalization to reach your best customers where they are versus making them come to your direct channel (customer sat and revenue enhancement)
9. Create a Foundation based community • Partnerships ◦ Standard bodies determine the needs and rules that will allow the flexibility their industry requires ◦ The foundation makes those rules interoperable across industries ◦ Taxonomy, syntax, encoding, API behaviors, tooling • Open Travel Foundation Role ◦ Provide open solutions that implement the recommended use of standards ranging from industry wide to sector specific (air, rail, etc.) ◦ Provide a sandbox environment exposing working examples as an onramp to adoption • Relationships ◦ Partners run work groups using agreed on process ◦ Industry wide governance (all groups represented) to assure interoperability ◦ Membership structure to fund maintenance of library and solutions Open Sales and Distribution Model (OSDM)
10. Proposed Open Travel Foundation Structure Each supported technical project will have its own project governance. The Governing Board is responsible for allocating Open Travel Foundation’s budget and is supported by Budget, Partnership and Outreach committees. The TAC will help the projects to communicate among themselves and with the Governing Board. TSC GOVERNING BOARD Budget, Partnership and Outreach Committees TECHNICAL ADVISORY COUNCIL Open Travel models & messages Open Offer Management Open Travel Tooling Modeling COMMUNITY DEV COMMUNITY Tool COMMUNITY TSC TSC
11. Solution Overview Technology Overview
12. Universal Open Offer, a digital truck • Think of a travel offer as a means to transport your product, a hotel room, airplane or rail seat, tour, cruise, rental call, etc. to a consumer. That’s the sole purpose of publishing an offer that travel distribution channels or apps will consume. The traveler no more sees the offer than a customer in a grocery store sees the truck that delivered the crate of oranges. • Uniqueness from each supplier in how the offer works only serves to increase costs for all. ◦ Each distributor and channel needs to build custom loading docks for each “truck” they need to receive • The Open Travel Foundation will deliver the needed universal open offer standards and solutions that will convey any product, at any price, with any rules the supplier provides ◦ The rules may include personalization rules with allows omni channel personal offers
13. API First to Model First, Shift Left • Recirculating past architectural approaches • DFDs, Flowchart, Service, System, Application, and Integration architecture, UML • Iterative development (aka AGILE) • Function vs data flows • API first, function flow but do you really have the data? Can the overall system architecture handle the functions at a target volume and cost? • Data first, hard to tell if the data is adequate without a definition on what is the function to be supported • Model first • Modeling can encompass both the data definition and the service definition in the same tool. • Still needs to be validated against the System, Application, and Integration architecture
14. OTM-DEx (Development Environment extended) • Features • Model Designer user interface • Repository for sharing object libraries • Extendable compiler for XML Schemas and WSDL • Benefits • Reusable libraries encourage object reuse • Applies style guide automatically • Schemas support interchangeable levels of detail • OTM-DE used to define canonical objects • Objects model includes various representations that all conform to interface specifications (xsd, OAS 3.0) • Identifiers make the object an accessible resource 14 Canonical OTM Business Object ID Summary Desktop Web Mobile • Field1 : Type • Field2 : Type • Field3 : Type … Data Fields • Field4 : Type • Field5 : Type • Field6 : Type … Data Fields • Field4 : Type • Field5 : Type • Field6 : Type … Data Fields • Field4 : Type • Field5 : Type • Field6 : Type … Host Data Air Rail PMS … Query Host Data Host Data Host Data OAS 3.0 Future OAS 3.3 Arazzo Overlays
15. Messages versus OTM Objects • An XML or JSON message just conveys data such as product name, attributes (1st class, 2nd class), price, payment methods accepted, etc. • Messages don’t convey the rules of use or the process flow (what can or must you do next) • Some suppliers such as IATA based airlines have a separate data feed for fare rules, but for most direct negotiations are required • Business Objects based on OTM are intelligent as in you can ask them questions • To provide the data needed like current messages • To provide the terms and conditions directly applicable to this offer • To state what is the next best action • Generic processing engines can be built with little to no inherent process or rules implied, they get all they need from the intelligent object Here’s all the data But what can I do with it? OTA XML Here’s my travel offer Great, I have all I need to sell it OTA OTM
16. • Attributes of an Offer • Product description (which may be a bundle) • Price • Ts&Cs which include rules on: • Use, which may be persona or personalization based • Combinability, guiding what this offer may or may not be combined with • Next; detailing possible next steps such as immediate or deferred payment • RAG status (green means sell!) • Offers may be digitally signed (guaranteed offer) Offers defined Price Ts&Cs Rules Use Comb Next Air Offer Data Agent Profile Traveler Profile Reservation Air Content Hotel Content Rail Content Car Content Ancillary
17. • The retail channel provider will need to manage offers from: • Many suppliers in the same travel pillar • Many suppliers across pillars (air, car, hotel, rail, etc.) • Hence a “trip experience” offer may contain other offers • A personalized trip offer is a container which may hold one or more supplier offers • An offer with multiple offers may itself have a combined price and aggregate Ts&Cs • Ts&Cs define how pillar offers combine Offer of Offers Price Ts&Cs Rules Use Comb Next Trip Offer Price Ts&Cs Rules Use Comb Next Air Offer Price Ts&Cs Rules Use Comb Next Car Offer Price Ts&Cs Rules Use Comb Next Hotel Offer
18. • Orders contain the same attributes as an offer • Ts&Cs guide what can be changed, cancelations, etc. • Order is moved to order management system • One can “shop” against existing Orders to add more offers (options), make changes, remove offers, etc. in a single reservation • Orders may be digitally signed indicating commitment to deliver • Analogous to active versus passive today Offers become Orders Price Ts&Cs Rules Use Comb Next Air Order Price Ts&Cs Rules Use Comb Next Reservation
19. Your seat at the table • Community of industry leaders ◦ Travel providers of all size ◦ Franchisees ◦ Travel distributors ◦ Travel channels ◦ Travel technology providers ◦ Travel standards bodies and trade associations ◦ Government bodies • Build Solutions together or thru vendor partnerships ◦ Deliver noncompetitive open solitons to speed up the transition ◦ Deliver automation, tools, standards, best practices to ease labor and budget constraints of participants ◦ Grow participation by adding projects and workgroups to solve industry challenges as a community You can start now by helping to define the attributes of a universal, open, offer Visit https://opentravel.org/ota- offer-order/ and select the link to join a workgroup
20. Thank You! Let’s talk about what happens next!