Overture and the OpenTravel Alliance: Enabling the Future of Travel with Open Data

Overture is collaborating with the OpenTravel Alliance (OTA), which lately joined the Linux Foundation and Overture as a member, to unravel a long-standing problem within the journey trade: knowledge interoperability. For years, the journey sector has struggled to standardize location knowledge for inns, points of interest, and different factors of curiosity throughout a posh ecosystem of suppliers.

Overture’s Global Entity Reference System (GERS) and Bridge Files present the open map knowledge infrastructure to unravel this downside. GERS assigns a single, dependable ID to any bodily place, and Bridge Files join that ID to current methods, making it simple to hyperlink disparate datasets.

A Common Language for Travel Locations

Overture offers the infrastructure to create a single supply of reality for location knowledge within the journey trade.

• A Global Places Dataset: Overture offers a foundational dataset of over 60 million locations of curiosity with names, classes, and addresses. This creates an open, world supply of reality that the journey trade can contribute to and construct upon. The knowledge flows into purposes from Overture members, already reaching billions of customers.
• GERS for Unified IDs: GERS assigns a novel, persistent ID to any bodily location, so a resort or rental automobile station will get a single ID to be used throughout all platforms and methods. When OTA members contribute their authoritative knowledge, Overture assigns a GERS ID, standardizing the knowledge to be used by members like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Meta, Microsoft, TomTom, and Esri.
• Bridge Files for Easy Integration: The journey trade depends on many various ID methods. Bridge Files join these current identifiers to GERS IDs by way of a easy be part of, avoiding complicated and expensive knowledge conflation. Our open knowledge basis permits anybody to match their knowledge to GERS IDs.

Unlocking New Use Cases for the Travel Industry

Our speedy aim is to align Overture’s knowledge definitions with OpenTravel’s object fashions, making a easy adoption path for the trade. Longer-term, as journey suppliers replace their info, these updates may movement mechanically into Overture through OpenTravel’s compiler. 

This foundational work permits a number of key use instances:

• A Connected Travel Ecosystem: GERS IDs create a seamless net of information, bettering coordination throughout journey discovery, reserving, and in-trip experiences. A resort reserving system may share exact location knowledge with a ride-sharing app or tour operator utilizing a standard GERS ID.
• Richer Map Experiences: A secure, open base map permits builders so as to add travel-specific knowledge layers. With OTA, the journey sector can align on schemas for particulars like resort facilities or real-time rental automobile availability, all linked to a GERS ID.
• Future Innovations: Forward-looking purposes embrace light-weight open requirements that make enterprise AI brokers simply discoverable. These requirements, anchored by GERS IDs, enable AI brokers to work together seamlessly throughout platforms. For occasion, inHotel, LinksRez, and Hilton are leveraging GERS to be used instances that can allow journey AI assistants to straight have interaction with inns’ AI brokers to ask questions or make a reservation, opening a brand new frontier for automated journey companies.
  

Our collaboration with the OpenTravel Alliance is a key step in constructing the open, interoperable infrastructure that trendy industries want. By combining Overture’s foundational map knowledge and reference framework with OTA’s trade requirements, we’re enabling a extra interoperable and modern future for journey.

Join the Overture Community

Overture Maps is constructing an interoperable open knowledge ecosystem for map knowledge. We invite enterprise listings managers, Places knowledge syndicators, and all map knowledge holders to contribute their datasets. Help create a definitive open useful resource that turns into the muse of native search, navigation, and numerous different location-based purposes. Email us at data@overturemaps.org in the event you’re curious about contributing. 

The way forward for mapping is open, collaborative, and constructed collectively. Join us in making it occur. Visit our web site to study extra about our work and change into a member.

Stay related: comply with us on LinkedIn, X, and Bluesky for the most recent updates. Sign up for Overture’s month-to-month publication for the most recent updates on our journey in reworking map knowledge distribution.

Interested in utilizing Overture knowledge? Check out the Explorer software, a no-code possibility for inspecting Overture knowledge and metadata, the knowledge guides for an outline of our six knowledge themes, and the “Getting Data” part of our documentation.