Booking Engine

(Only English)
OpenTravel is an open 'syntax' standard that takes communication down to the individual data element level and allows two parties to communicate individual data elements in any order and quantity that they wish. OpenTravel travel standards are intended to create new opportunities for travel agencies as the cost to communicate directly with a supplier for information will be greatly reduced and standardized using a common, widely used, proven protocol. With access to a wider variety of more readily available travel supplier information, agencies will be able to better serve their clients. For the GDSs (also known as computer reservation systems), we believe OpenTravel standards will afford new opportunities as well. Developing and maintaining current messaging standards is expensive and uses highly specialized programming. The OTA specification uses the eXtensible Markup Language (XML) that allows for the exchange of structured data as well as processing instructions over the Internet or other means of transport. With XML, OTA defined a common vocabulary of data items in terms of elements, attributes, or reusable entities. Logical groups of data elements are represented by schema fragments that provide formal specification of semantics and data typing that allows the schema fragments to be combined into message structures as needed. With the recent promotion of XML Schema as a Recommendation from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), OTA has developed schema files for the messaging components and profile content data found in this specification, making it available for implementation. Parties may also choose to validate messages using a document type definition (DTD) that defines the hierarchical arrangement of data items according to a set of rules. In either case, separate DTD or schema specifies basic error conditions and administrative messages independent of the versioned specifications.