Travel Technology Initiative (TTI) together with the European Tour Operators Association (ETOA) are set to launch a revolutionary new hotel identification service. Called TTIcodes, the service will offer unique hotel identifiers for every hotel used by tour operators, bedbanks and other subscribers.  Importantly, TTIcodes 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.

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 8 digit TTIcode. 

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 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 benefit from heavily discounted pricing with the basic service starting at EUR202 per month.

Peter Dennis, Chairman of TTI, stated, "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. I am delighted that TTI is able to play its part in helping the industry to become more efficient."

Tom Jenkins, Executive Director of ETOA said, "We are happy to be part of this project.  TTIcodes should make a real difference to consumers and so to our members, in a stroke it removes a major area of confusion."

TTIcodes is currently being tested by several beta customers. A full launch of the service is set for 4 October.