RWA ANNOUNCES SUPPORT FOR THE NEW TOPAS AND TORIX STANDARDS

RWA is pleased to announce that Sell-It Online supports the new TOPAS and TORIX standards enabling Tour Operator’s to benefit from the power and reliability of Sell-It Online’s Internet browsing and booking capabilities working in conjunction with their current reservation system. The TOPAS and TORIX standards are the result of cooperative work undertaken by the Travel under the auspices of the Technology Initiative by a number of members including First Choice, MyTravel, Thomas Cook and TUI. The standards, intended to facilitate the online distribution and booking of tour operator products, were announced by the TTI at its Autumn Conference in London on the 5th October. Sell-It Online is able to receive product prices and availability data from an existing reservation system in a TOPAS file and use this information to populate its product cache. RWA has already deployed a solution for TUI’s Specialist Holidays Group (SHG) that processed AVLABL files (the forerunner to TOPAS) and is currently working with Thomas Cook on deployment of a system which processes TOPAS files for Neilson and one other tour operating brand. In addition, Sell-It Online is also able to interact with a Tour Operator’s existing reservation system via the TORIX interface. This capability is also being deployed as part of the Thomas Cook solution. In fact, the new Thomas Cook online booking web sites will be the first sites to go live with a full implementation of the TOPAS and TORIX specifications. – Ends – About Sell-It Online Sell-It Online, formerly Sell-It Package, is a member of RWA’s Sell-It Suite family of products and provides Tour Operators with a powerful and reliable online browsing, searching and booking capability. Sell-It Online’s unique Holiday BrowseTM capability offers web site visitors a compelling means of finding and booking the holiday product of their choice. Sell-It Online can be deployed to work in conjunction with a Tour Operator’s existing ‘legacy’ reservation system or with Sell-It Reservator, RWA’s new reservation system, as part of an end-to-end new system deployment. For further information see: www.sell-it-suite.com About TOPAS and TORIX TOPAS (Tour Operator Product Availability Standard) and TORIX (Tour Operator Reservations In XML) are two standards arising from work that the TTI has been doing with First Choice, MyTravel, Thomas Cook and TUI. The TOPAS standard is based on the ‘industry standard’ AVLABL file format and enables the online distribution of Tour Operator product price and availability information. TORIX (Tour Operator Reservations In XML) defines an XML interface into a Tour Operator’s reservation system enabling the real-time booking of Tour Operator products. First Choice, MyTravel, Thomas Cook and TUI have all committed to providing TOPAS and TORIX capabilities. About The TTI The Travel Technology Initiative (TTI) was founded in 1989 to establish technology standards within the travel industry. At that time, a number of leading travel companies recognised the benefits of using common system interfaces and documentation and agreed to form an industry wide group to develop technology standards. Since then, TTI membership has grown to over 100 members covering 10 countries across Europe and the USA. In that time, TTI has become the recognised authority on Electronic Data Interchange and e-commerce within the European travel industry and has also developed and introduced standardised ticket formats, both for ATB2 and more traditional coupons. For further information see: www.tti.org About RWA Ltd. RWA Ltd. is a travel technology and solutions company specialising in helping Tour Operators and Intermediaries with product sales and distribution. Approximately 60% of the current UK ViewData traffic is routed and managed by RWA solutions. RWA is actively involved in TOWARD Europe and is working with the TTI on XML standards for product distribution. The Sell-It Suite family of solutions is a product of the combination of RWA’s many years of experience working with Tour Operators and the high level of technical expertise gained through work with the largest companies in both the Travel and Finance industry sectors. For further information see: www.rwa-net.co.uk For more information please contact: Mark Bradbury Director – Business Development, RWA Limited Tel. +44 (0)29 2081 5050 or email [email protected]