Technology is due to be unveiled next month which promises to revolutionise the travel industry and remove a major area of confusion.
Developed after a two-year collaboration by Travel Technology Initiative and European Tour Operators Association, new TTIcodes will be launched on 4 October.
“TTIcodes are going to do nothing less than revolutionise the way that tour operators and other travel companies cope with electronic accommodation feeds from bedbanks and other wholesalers,” said a spokesman for TTI.
“TTIcodes are unique hotel identifiers. For the first time in the history of the travel industry, these are going to be in the public domain to be freely shared and communicated.
“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.
"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."
Initially 200,000 hotels have been assigned a unique eight-digit TTIcode as part of the service, being run by German company GIATA.
TTI chairman Peter Dennis said: "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."
by Bev Fearis
