NB: This is a guest article by Phil Donathy, product manager at Travelport and responsible for overseeing the Travelport Universal API project.
I read the recent Tnooz analysis by Flextrip co-founder Alex Kremer about travel’s gatekeepers and APIs with great interest.
In his article, Kremer is calling for more openness, less red tape and greater co-operation. He comments that the opposite is commonly observed in the travel industry, making it challenging for innovative start-ups to flourish.
Although not explicitly stated, the GDSs have often been criticised en masse as culprits on the 'gatekeeping' front. But Travelport has shown otherwise in recent years, as we increasingly open up our platforms to eager programme innovators.
At Travelport, working closely with the developer community is seen as intrinsically beneficial for all parties concerned and we are delivering solutions like Travelport Universal API that enable such collaboration.
There are many examples of innovation flowing when platforms are open and this fosters a robust travel industry that is in sync with technological advancements. For Travelport, these aspirations must be balanced with ensuring that we are fairly compensated for the use of our own platforms, products, and innovations.
We do believe it’s possible to align these goals so that partnerships can be established in which all parties stand to gain.
Of course we and our supplier partners benefit when developers build applications to drive bookings through the platform, but our subscribers also benefit from developers building apps that help them address a variety of different needs: be it itinerary management; workflow; mid-back office or reporting solutions to name but a few.
As we see it, there are three key areas to address for success:
1. Access
In principle our view is that access should be as open as possible – giving developers quick and easy access. We have made a real effort to support developers, providing simple online access to a comprehensive SDK including help files, sample XML and a sample IBE.
There’s even sample code to get people started, as well as the opportunity to gain free access to our test systems. We absolutely want developers to work with our API and we clearly see the value in mash ups using our API alongside others.
Access to live production systems must come with some reasonable restrictions, in part because we must take care with the inventory of the supplier partners whose content we are accessing.
We aim to ensure that developers get the best possible support from our experts with one-to-one discussions between partners and our commercial and technical teams.
2. Supportive Pricing
The issue of money always comes up! Our pricing model is designed to facilitate successful partnerships.
There are charges for the valuable support we provide – but these are relatively nominal fees and the model is flexible, supporting those who make bookings as well as those who just want to look.
3. Commercial, industry and technical support
We know that our customers need and want support, both proactive and reactive. So if a developer wants to work with us then support is available throughout the process.
That starts with guidance on the best way to work with Travelport from a commercial perspective via our Partnerships and Alliances team. Today this team already works with hundreds of our developer partners worldwide.
We also provide technical support which means being able to access help from a global API support team. This experienced team help developers get their application live and support any queries post go-live. This is in addition to the comprehensive online support.
In conclusion, we don’t have all the answers – but we are working on it.
We support the goals of being open and easy to work with and we would certainly be keen to have input from the developer community, whether they work with us already or not, on what else they would like to see from Travelport.
I welcome your feedback via the comments section on Tnooz or direct to: [email protected]
NB: This is a guest article by Phil Donathy, product manager at Travelport and responsible for overseeing the Travelport Universal API project.