The hotel industry is fragmented, and so are the standards it uses to categorize its data. The industry would be better able to communicate with each other if its systems used common standards for data.

Aspiring to fill the gap is Amadeus, the Madrid-based travel technology giant.

Tnooz recently spoke with Peter Waters, Amadeus’s head of hotel distribution, who specifically invoked the recent airline industry effort at standardization as a positive model for the hotel industry to learn from.

This is notable because, several years ago, Amadeus lobbied against the effort of the International Air Transport Association (IATA) to persuade airlines and technology providers to adopt new, global technology standards (called the New Distribution Capability, or NDC). Now about 90 airlines expect to be using the New Distribution Capability standard by 2020, IATA claims.

The difference is that when it comes to hotels, Amadeus wants the industry to adopt its own standards, not some lobbying group’s.

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