A “revolutionary” new hotel identification service is to be introduced by the Travel Technology Initiative with the European Tour Operators Association.
An 200,000 hotels have been assigned a unique 8-digit TTIcode, a unique hotel identifier for every property used by tour operators, bedbanks and other subscribers.
The codes will be in the public domain, so allowing hotels to publicise their own unique TTIcodes.
“This will avoid the confusion that is currently rife in the industry as it struggles with hotel names that are misspelt, wrongly translated or simply incorrect,” a TTI spokesman said.
“With dynamic packaging being common-place, tour operators and others struggle with the de-duplication of multiple electronic bed-bank feeds, not knowing, for example, whether the Grand Hotel or Hotel Grande are one of the same property. TTIcodes will address this.”
TTIcodes are being tested by several beta customers with a full launch planned for October 4.
The service is being run by German company GIATA.
The basic offering will provide subscribers with hotels’ TTIcodes and basic address information. Other options include hotels’ geo-codes, vital for showing a hotel’s location on online maps, and cross-referenced ID codes of more than 250 distribution channels.
Travel companies will be able to submit their own hotel databases for coding should their hotels not have TTIcodes already assigned.
TTI and ETOA members will receive heavily discounted pricing with the basic service starting at 202 euros a month.
TTI chairman Peter Dennis said: “TTIcodes is nothing less than a revolution for the travel industry.
“As the service rolls out, it will completely address the de-dupication nightmare faced by every travel company that takes several bedbank feeds.
“At last, here is a solution that will provide categoric identification of each and every hotel. This will save travel companies an enormous amount of time and effort.”
ETOA executive director Tom Jenkins added: “TTIcodes should make a real difference to consumers and so to our members, in a stroke it removes a major area of confusion.”