OTDS - Offener Touristischer Datenstandard

A high performance data standard is transforming the travel industry: The Open Travel Data Standard OTDS facilitates travel offers performing on highest data quality levels into the travel sales channels. The modern XML standard accelerates and specifies the production of travel offers while at the same time delivering significantly more booking relevant details and number of data records.
The travellers benefit from a comprehensive and meaningful travel offer matching their search terms which in addition can be narrowed down to their individual whishes via filters. Last but not least reliable pricings and availability declarations ease the way to booking conversion.

OTDS stands for the Open Travel Data Standard – a powerful data format developed from experts within the travel industry to serve the branch. All interested market player may use the format and its extensive documentation free of charge.

The XML-format OTDS contains all master data of the included travel components as well as all necessary product and pricing rules. Travel providers may use OTDS to distribute their offer into all sales channels, whether it be to travel agencies or to travel websites.

The Open Travel Data Standard OTDS is published by the OTDS association (OTDS e.V.) in Berlin, Germany. The members of the association represent almost every branch of the travel industry and join forces to continuously refine and extend the data format OTDS.

Via the committees of the association each member is actively involved in the decision-making process and into the development roadmap and realisation. The joint future development of OTDS and the communication between the members takes places within the exclusive internet-based member’s forum.

For accessing the OTDS-Forum with the OTDS Schema-files and the Technical Documentation, please register here free of charge.

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Fast

OTDS significantly minimizes the production time for data exports of tour operators or their Inventory Management Systems. Compared to the standards used to date such as INFX or KATI the production time is reduced by at least 75 percent. In addition incremental updates allow for deliveries of parts of the portfolio with the corresponding reduced file generation time.

Compact

Thanks to OTDS tour operators and other provider may decrease the volume of their data delivery to distribution systems significantly: In practice sizes for OTDS-files reach no more than 10% of the size for INFX-deliveries containng the same amount of offers. As with OTDS rather price- and product rules than complete offers are expressed, considerably more offers can be transferred in even smaller files. The effect on transfer- and loading times is correspondingly positive – while at the same time data quality is pushed to a higher level.

Precise

Due to the precise definition of price- and product rules by the tour operator in OTDS there is no scope for interpretation when processing the data. As a result the data quality increases – trips are displayed with reliably calculated prices and availabilities within the consulting tools of travel agencies and in the IBEs. Also total prices for families are feasible.
In general with OTDS 95% of all prices are identical with those of the booking request. More that 90% of the trips are available and bookable.

Free of charge

OTDS as the open, nonproprietary standard is available free-of-charge and may be used by any tour operator- and distribution system – regardless of the technology deployed (e.g. central caches or local player). This ensures independence from proprietary data standards or -formats for tour operators and distribution systems.

Extensive

OTDS already allows the transfer of all data for the most relevant travel components accommodation, flight, packaged travel as well as add-on services such as transfers, rental cars, insurances, activities, or parking lots. In addition OTDS contains all product- and price rules necessary for correct price calculation. All relevant information needed for product display, availability check, booking requests and the booking itself are also included.

Compatible

OTDS is compatible for various systems: it is the powerful standard of choice for providing travel data to central cache systems as well as all filling players located in the sphere of the supplier. OTDS also supports different external attribution systems for describing the travel products such as Giata Facts and DRV GlobalTypes.

The leading distribution systems in the German market already interpret and process OTDS. By doing so, the optimized data are available within their frontoffice tools for travel agencies as well as in their internet booking engines. The tour operator webpages also can be equipped with the enhanced OTDS-data, so that customers searching for travel offers in travel agencies or in the internet can rely on meaningful offers with reliable pricing and availability information and including add-on services. The OTDS format allows for significantly more details, options, room- and flight alternatives.

Families can rely on the total price of a trip when transmitted with OTDS from the very first display on. Price corrections resulting from booking requests are omitted thanks to reliable adult- and children prices and explicit rules for the price calculation in dynamically packaged travel offers.

The travel industry works with a large number of data formats. Those formats help to display the countless travel offers of tour operators and other provider that reach the consumer via various distribution channels. All information about a trip are being processed so that the IT systems within the distribution chain can depict those data.
But the travel wishes of the consumer today are much more individual than ten years ago – the travel offers have to meet this change. And also tour operators and other supplier, online portals and travel agencies expect more from the technology they use. Legacy data formats today cannot fulfill those expectations anymore.

So far provider in the travel industry had to translate their travel offers into several data formats in order to supply the various distribution channels. In spite of the many formats the provider often did not succeed in highlighting their specific competitive advantages: the one format lacks a space for submitting taxi transfers, the other format cannot deal with child price reductions or specific child care offers.

So a new, common, open format was needed that delivers all relevant information regarding a travel offer into all distribution channels. This is precisely the intention of OTDS. At the same time it shall reflect the requirements of as many market player as possible and refine itself as an open data format. Thanks to the cost-free download at this website OTDS is freely accessible to all interested travel organisations and thus can establish itself as the future market standard.

OTDS versions - OTDS 1.0 was published by the OTDS association in April 2012. Within this first basic version the travel components accomodation, flight, packaged travel and add-on services such as transfer, rental car, parking, insurances etc. together with all the implicated product- and pricing rules already could be represented.

Version OTDS 1.9.3 provided comprehensive options for flight prioritisation and rules for rounding monetary amounts. Together with the multi-currency option and further diversified possibilities for rental cars and insurances those criteria meet the requirements of many tour operator regarding an efficient and extensive display of their travel products in the distribution systems.

With the main version 2.0, non-bookable content elements such as descriptive texts and media content as well as the ability for multilingualism were integrated. Thanks to the introduction of the Compare construct, product components can be combined much more flexibly under predefined conditions. The Accomodation-, Flight- and AddonWrapper allow the mapping of a sequence of flights and several hotels with rooms, meals and durations - an important basis for round trips in OTDS.

The current version OTDS 2.1 as new features among others offers a revision of the BookingNameSpace, introduces @Class to properties and extends the update option for tags.

TUI

TUI supplies more than 20 billion offer data records daily in the OTDS format to the distribution systems Amadeus, Traffics and Schmetterling. The portfolio includes the NurHotel, Package Travel and dynamic offers of 10 TUI brands (including TUI, Airtours, 1-2-Fly, XTUI and Terra) in the three markets Germany, Austria and Switzerland...

Bewotec

Bewotec offers tour operators and distribution channels a wide variety of services and data based on OTDS and Bewotec’s decentralized Player technology. Tour operators and other providers such as the FTI GROUP, Bentour, Luxair Tours and others benefit...

Traffics

Traffics equipped the website of BigXtra with the responsive Evolution IBE. It unites travel offers of various tour operators. The travel offers of BigXtra and FTI are based on OTDS data, thus providing a higher data quality with respect to availability and correct prices...

Schmetterling Technology

Within just ten weeks, Schmetterling Technology realized the switch to the OTDS data standard in 2016. In the meantime, the IT-provider integrated the entire range of hotel-only, package, and flight-only tour operators in OTDS in its Search & Compare system XENA, in the IBE URANIA, and by means of the XML interface URANIAweb for OTA...

FTI Group

The FTI GROUP was among the first to use OTDS – tour operator FTI Touristik as early as January 2014 inhouse produced and delivered its Hotel-only offers in this open standard. Step-by-step further products groups and marktets as well as the portfolios of other tour operator brands within the FTI GROUP such as 5vorFlug, BigXtra, Sonnenklar TV, and Windrose followed...

Schauinsland-Reisen

Schauinsland-Reisen migrated its hotel-only data delivery to Traveltainment to OTDS in May 2015. In May 2016 the complex portfolio for package travel and for its dynamic brand SLRD followed suite. For WBS Blank, Schauinsland’s inventory system provider, the pilot project with Schauinsland was a first and successful cornerstone...

Bentour Reisen

Bentour Reisen, a Swiss specialist for trips to Turkey with a strong customer base also in Germany, has opted for a mix of data production by WBS Blank for its data deliveries and an OTDS-Player provided by Bewotec for its IBE and other distribution systems...

Olimar

OLIMAR, a specialist for Portugal, Spain and the Mediterranean is a pioneer for implementing innovative IT solutions. As such OLIMAR was the first provider to deliver OTDS data for complete packaged trips. The optimised data are now being integrated into other distribution systems in the German market...

Attika Reisen

Attika Reisen, specialized in trips to Greece, completed the migration to the OTDS standard in September 2016 for its entire portfolio. As a result the production time e.g. for Hotel Only data was reduced significantly to as little as one hour...

“OTDS: a flexible and living standard, that optimally displays the enormous product diversity of dozens of WBS-tour operators – without converter or third parties. Highest performance in terms of quality and quantity!”

Helmut Telgmann Manager Product & Service, WBS Blank Software GmbH

“OTDS is just fun”

Ömer Karaca Managing Director Schmetterling International GmbH & Co. KG

“OTDS offers unlimited possibilities for travel offers and overcomes the limitations of other formats.”

Michael Aubermann Co-Founder & Travel Technology Consultant, a-five business solutions GmbH

AIDA (entire offering in Bewotec OTDS-Player for aida.de)
Aldiana (live in Amadeus, Schmetterling and Traffics)
Alltours (entire offering live in Amadeus, Schmetterling and Traffics)
Anex (Hotel-only and packaged trips live in Amadeus, Schmetterling and Traffics)
anixe (bedbank, Hotel-only data-delivery)
Bentour Reisen (entire offering live in Amadeus, Schmetterling and Traffics)
Bucher Reisen (entire offering live in Amadeus, Schmetterling and Traffics)
byebye (entire offering live in Amadeus, Schmetterling and Traffics)
Center Parks (OTDS production by Bewotec, integration in Amadeus ongoing)
Connected Destination (Hotel-only and packaged trips live in Traffics)
Coral Travel (entire offering and travel type KISS live in Amadeus, Schmetterling and Traffics)
Coral Travel Switzerland (entire offering live in Amadeus)
DERTOUR (entire offering live in Amadeus, Schmetterling and Traffics)
dta Touristik (Hotel-only and packaged trips live in Amadeus)

ECCO-Reisen (entire offering live in Amadeus)
ETI (entire offering live in Amadeus, Schmetterling and Traffics, OTDS in website)
EuroParcs Ferienparks (Hotel-only data converted into OTDS by ISO, live in Amadeus)
Flamingo Tours (Hotel-only live in Amadeus)
Gruber Reisen (entire offering in Bewotec OTDS-Player, live in Amadeus)
Helvetic Tours (Hotel-only and packaged trips live in Amadeus, Schmetterling and Traffics)
ITS, ITS Billa und ITS Coop (entire offering live in Amadeus, Schmetterling and Traffics)
Jahn (entire offering live in Amadeus, Schmetterling and Traffics)
Kuoni (entire offering live in Amadeus, Schmetterling and Traffics)
Luxair Tours (entire offering live in Amadeus)
Meiers Weltreisen (entire offering live in Amadeus, Schmetterling and Traffics)
Misir (entire offering in Bewotec OTDS-Player)
Neckermann Reisen (entire offering live in Amadeus, Schmetterling and Traffics)

Öger Tours (entire offering live in Amadeus, Schmetterling and Traffics)
Olimar (entire offering live in Amadeus, Schmetterling and Traffics, OTDS for website)
Palma (Hotel-only and Packaged trips live in Traffics)
Phoenix (Hotel-only and Packaged trips live in Amadeus)
Schauinsland-Reisen (entire offering live in Amadeus, Schmetterling and Traffics)
Sonnenklar-TV (Hotel-only and packaged trips live in Amadeus and Traffics)
Travel Partner (Hotel-only also in combination with Addon-Services in various channels)
TravelTrex
TUI (TUI Germany/Switzerland, Airtours DE/CH, XTUI: entire offering live in Amadeus, Schmetterling and Traffics)
TUI Cruises (offering available in Bewotec OTDS-Player and on TUI Cruises website)
Urlaubstouristik (entire offering live in Amadeus)
vtours (VTOI live in Traffics)
Windrose Finest Travel (Hotel-only and packaged trips live in Amadeus and Schmetterling)

Flight content in the OTDS format is provided by the travel technology solution providers of Bewotec via its Flex Flight Player (click here for Bewotec airline list) and Ypsilon.net (click here for Ypsilon airline list).

The “Verein zur Förderung eines offenen touristischen Datenstandards e.V.” (Association to promote an Open Travel Data Standard, OTDS e.V. in Berlin, Germany) specifies and develops the data format OTDS for the travel industry. OTDS is based on open, nondiscriminatory, and standardized technologies. The data format is freely available and free-of-charge to everyone, especially to enterprises within the travel industry – regardless of a membership within the OTDS e.V.

OTDS – a modern data standard

It is the objective of the OTDS e.V. to establish its state-of-the-art data format OTDS as a market-wide standard for transmitting all product data relevant for distribution between provider/tour operators and distribution systems. The format is open and non-proprietary. OTDS is independent from any technology concepts and can be used with central caching systems as well as with decentralized player-hub solutions.

The OTDS association as of today has 31 members. They represent almost all areas of the travel industry as well as several markets: tour operators, supplier, touristic distribution systems, travel technology supplier, and associations. The OTDS e.V. offers members comprehensive support for their implementation of the data standard as well as the opportunity to actively promote the development of the format by becoming active in the OTDS member forum. Here, the extensive Thematic Specification, which - unlike the Technical Specification - is reserved only for the members of the Association, is also stored.

You may request extensive information on the membership in the form below.

The member companies include: