Overview

This workgroup has achieved integration of the key systems that manage distribution for hotels, including property management systems, revenue management systems, central reservations systems, customer relationship management systems, content management systems, external distribution channels (GDS, Internet, and other), and intermediaries (switches, caches, representation companies, and the like).  See the charter for full details.

The workgroup utilizes the message specifications previously created by the OpenTravel^TM Alliance (OTA).  Additional requirements for message transport, authentication, security, and other necessary elements not covered by the OTA specification have been added, and certain changes to the OTA specification were made based on the workgroup's recommendation.  Use cases have been developed for specific business processes.  The HTNG specification imposes substantially more constraints than the OTA specification, ensuring that any two business partners who have implemented it can conduct basic transactions. 

Progress to Date

Click here to view the latest informational flysheet of the workgroup that was distributed at HITEC 2008 (PDF).

This workgroup determined that while many companies support the OTA specifications, few have implemented them in the same way, and the resulting interfaces are therefore less than "plug and play."  Starting from the OTA specifications, this workgroup has completed a set of use cases and usage profiles that all participating vendors have agreed to support in the same way, to support basic reservation, rate, and availability transactions among any two compliant systems.

The first publicly available specification was released to the HTNG certification program as the core element of the HTNG 2007a Property/Distribution Solution specification in February 2007.  This specification includes reservation delivery, rate update, and availability update. 

To view the specifications or a list of certified products, please visit the HTNG certification site.  The specification was opened to certification in late February 2007 and numerous vendors were working on certification during the first and second quarter of 2007.

Current Status

This workgroup is active and is now addressing additional group issues, such as group block maintenance, as well as statistical data extracts for revenue management systems.

Applications for Participation

This workgroup is actively accepting new members.  Interested parties should read the information on applying for HTNG workgroups and teams here. The workgroup as a whole meets only 3-4 times per year so it is recommended that new participants do not wait for the next meeting to become involved in a team. 

Participants

Organization

The workgroup meets as a whole periodically, but the development of messaging specifications is handled by the Message Definition Team, which meets by teleconference most weeks.

Message Definition Team