NEWS – OPEN DESTINATIONS INTRODUCES NEXT GENERATION OF DYNAMIC PACKAGING AT WORLD TRAVEL MARKET 2015

Travel technology specialist Open Destinations has introduced a new dynamic search module to their Travel Studio reservations platform.  The module is designed to quickly combine flight and hotel product from their worldwide library of GDS, airlines, hotels and wholesaler content. ‘We have brought dynamic packaging for tour operators to the next level,’ says CEO Kevin O’Sullivan. ‘Tour operators need the functionality to compete head on with major OTA’s and provide easy access to their range of air and hotel product. The supply of products has grown exponentially and this technology provides automation that will help them quickly see and sell their most competitive and profitable products.’

The new module provides higher visibility of the tour operator product in search results, which O’Sullivan claims will aid tour operators in pushing their more profitable product. Operators will have the option to filter search results by supplier, where they can choose a nett rate of a hotel contract over a wholesaler, or vice versa.

The flight search within the new module will look across all air integrations, which enables operators to filter by either GDS or direct airline contract. The flight component will also look to normalise the flight search so that hidden extras, such as luggage charges, don’t cloud what the customer’s best choices are.

The Open Destinations team has utilised Microsoft’s leading edge Signal R technology for the technology development, which allows bi-directional communication between server and client. This technology has been built into the existing booking engine of Travel Studio allowing existing customers to take advantage of the new functionality.

Travel Studio has undergone an extensive series of integrations over the past year in the airline, hotel and wholesaler space. These include air interfaces with Jetstar, Air Arabia and Aer Lingus, as well as large bedbanks such as Miki Travel, JacTravel and Diethelm Travel Group.  The company has also migrated more channel managers into their Channel Management API, which is used by many hotels to update rates and availability directly for their tour operator and wholesaler clients.

The Open Destinations team will be on-site at WTM (Stand TT428) to demo the latest version of Travel Studio. Further enhancements to Travel Studio are planned for 2016, which include more integrations with low-cost airlines and a dynamic rail module.