Talking about technology standards can be mind-numbingly boring, and I should know – I talk about them all the time.
It’s my job, and usually I like it; sometimes though I’d rather just talk about the weather.
But talking about standards at the Tnooz #tcamp2 this week in London was not boring; it was, amazingly, fun.
You probably think I’m exaggerating or at least taking a bit of editorial license, but I’m not.
It was great to be surrounded by experts in travel distribution whose opinions were shaped by experience, good and bad, working with XML-based standards and who, with beer in hand, were more than willing to share those opinions.
We started off by agreeing on the general usefulness of standards.
After all, light bulbs work in lamps because the manufacturers agree on standard fittings and wattage, and we can all play music on our various players because of the MP3 standard.  Can’t argue with that.
We moved onto how standards can stimulate innovation, but here opinions diverged a bit.
The argument was put forth that standards could stifle innovation, but a counter-argument was made that standards are usually created for a generally commoditized product (a light bulb) or service (providing information or availability for a tour or a resort or any type of travel product via some electronic means).
Standardizing the commodity and re-using it (in our case, transmitting information via standard XML messages) frees up intellectual and financial capital to innovate the non-commodity – like the lamp and the lampshade, or more to the point, the presentation, servicing and fulfillment of the tour, resort or other travel product.
How much a given company should standardize, especially in a non-regulated industry like travel, is of course a business decision that can only be made by that company, and lots of heads nodded at that statement.
And everyone knows there is no monolithic “travel industry”; adventure travel is very different from cruising, which is very different from renting a car.
Electronic distribution is a continuum, from the most basic online information on one end (hours of operation, for example) to complex transactions on the other.
Travel products land on that continuum based on the type of product, the supplier and the market, and do not have to move toward the transactional end.
Just because the rental car space heavily utilizes standard transactional XML messages doesn’t mean eco-tourism can, or should, to the same degree.
Standards shouldn’t force a company to distribute its product in a way that doesn’t meet its business needs, and an effective standards body should heed that message.
Sounds great, doesn’t it?  Go ahead, admit it – now you wish you’d been there too.
About Valyn Perini
Yes, Valyn, but do standards slow innovation? Some airlines say they can’t wait for standards. And, after they’ve sunk $20 million into a project, should they retreat once standards come out?
That being said, I do agree that standards amount to major progress for the industry.
Dennis, large companies like airlines have many different standards they must follow so I’m not sure if you’re comment is specific to XML messaging standards.
I’ve been hearing a lot about airline standards specifically around merchandising but it seems that most of the talk concerns merchandising presentation and fulfillment business process standards from airline to GDS to travel agent and back. Adding data fields to distribute merchandise description, pricing and terms into existing XML messages is not hard; getting all the players (airlines, GDS, travel agencies) to agree on the business processes surrounding those data fields IS hard.
When a company says they “can’t wait for standards” I’m always prompted to ask how hard they tried to engage the appropriate standards body, their trading partners and the larger industry in the creation of the needed standards.
I do wish I had been there Valyn. Not unlike our session at Online Revealed where we talked about destination messaging standards, once people understand the concept that they can focus on developing and innovating their offerings without worrying about technology, the idea tends to sound more palatable. You’d be surprised how many lights turned on when I gave my cans of tuna analogy. Great job in London!
Having spent several years contributing to the development of High Tech standards with Rossetanet (www.rosettanet.org) I dream to have a similar approach within the Tourism Industry.
For the French readers, I’m proposing to add this subject as a topic for the next meeting of the “Institut Français du Tourisme” that will be dedicated to the “Research in Tourism”
Jean-Claude MORAND
Valyn: Yes, the airline I was speaking to was referring to merchandising, fare types. I’m not sure what kinds of standards the carrier was referring to. Interesting point you make about engaging standards’ bodies. Well, you know, maybe airline talk about standards is a smokescreen as they probably feel taking the lone ranger route is a competitive edge.
Chaps,
Lets be clear that there are two types of standards – ones that are manufactured and ones that provide value because there is a common agreement on the need.
If we hone in on merchandising standards. There (as usual) are a lot of vested interests. The legacy airlines want to extend the model to their primary sales channels IE enable sale of Ancillary Revenue products at the point of sale rather than exclusively on the airline’s website or the service delivery point IE the airport.
There is an elephant in the room. The GDSs are just not ready to deploy AR products. There are two large components that are required initially.
1. the sale process
2. the fulfillment process.
The GDSs are balking at the former, (more below) the latter has standards for V-MPD and EMD-A and EMD-S. The GDSs are being remarkably slow about addressing them. IATA BSP too is also dragging its feet which would seem to be unusual as it is such a high value proposition for the airlines. And this reflects the battle within IATA. The US airlines get and need AR (and ARC too). The Europeans not so much.
Handling the sale process has spawned a number of kludge solutions based around existing standards being adapted to make things work. (EG Paying for SSRs). The core problem is that the whole AR proposition has exposed the radical concept that the traditional communication protocols between GDSs and the Airlines are now outdated and can no longer handle airlines distribution needs particularly AR effectively.
So the elephant cannot be eaten in large chunks but we do need new tools to carve it up. This is where the whole issue of the standards battle is being waged. Retain and try and fix the Edifact based protocols – themselves successors to even older message sets or move to a broader XML based infrastructure. Seems straightforward enough – but the issue which no one likes to speak of except in hushed tones – is that the GDSs will need to radically change their technology at a time when they can least afford it. Well some airlines (particularly from the US base) cannot wait and are acting unilaterally. The onus now sits on the GDSs to either fix their internal deficiencies and go with the flow or to fight and act as a constraint. Right now they are adopting the latter approach while trying to figure out the right way to do the former – albeit with constrained funding.
The net result is that unless there is some movement by the GDSs the battle will get worse and there will be casualties. Timing for the GDSs could not have come at a worse moment. The GDSs have been out there raising the bar on incentives/subsidies to agencies while cutting their absolute and percentage technology/service investments – particularly in their core. Looks great for the IPO but not too good for the long term. Thus the fallout from the TP failed IPO is now a factor.
OK – now I have that off my chest – what do we do about it? Frankly there are solutions. But in my view the need for a radical review of migrating standard from EDIFACT to XML based GDS-Airline PSS interaction should be a strong topic for debate and hopefully action.
For those in other sectors of the industry – there will be a watchful and wary eye cast over this process. And rightly so!
Cheers
Timothy makes a good point, that there must be real commercial incentive (or even imperative) for an organisation to to develop new messaging interfaces [based on standards], when current interfaces are alreday in place, even if they are not ideal. These re-engineering projects are substantial, may not yield immediate commercial benefits, and thus are hard to justify in the current economic climate.
The other problem with travel is that the transactions are complex and often distributed over time and between disparate inventory sources, and therefore the associated message sets are similarly complex. As Valyn says, there is no one-size-fits-all. Standards have their place, but must be subserviant to the commercial imperative – to do business and make money!