Packages are only as good as the supply behind them

Every hotel, attraction and ferry company runs its own system. That system holds the truth about prices, availability and day-to-day operations. To sell those products together, you have to connect to each one. It is the quiet work behind every package, and it was the subject of this session.

Ludvig Olsson has spent ten years at VISIT working with customers that are more than a hotel: ferry operators, parks, attractions and ski resorts. He started with some history. Citybreak began in 1999 as a way to put a destination’s supply online. Over time it became an integration platform, pulling real-time inventory from many systems so it can be sold in one channel or many. The VISIT platform has more than 400 integrations in total. This session was about one kind: connections to other booking systems, so their products can be sold.

Letting partners build the connection

The first news concerned hotels. Most property management systems in the market connect through BookVisit, and from there the inventory can be reused across the platform. This year BookVisit released a partner API. PMS vendors can now build their integrations themselves, instead of waiting in a queue for VISIT to build them. That means more integrations, sooner, and more inventory within your reach.

A standard, and a way around it

Experiences are harder. Tim Törnblom explained that iTicket now supports OCTO, the open standard for sourcing and distributing tours, activities and attractions. An external system that speaks OCTO can be connected, and its products are created in iTicket automatically, ready for any sales channel. It is live in production.

A standard only goes so far, though. OCTO has no room today for details some suppliers need, like a shoe size or the information a ski pass requires. Pricing is optional. And some partners will not support the standard at all.

So the team also built a framework for custom supplier integrations. Each one is still custom, but they all share the same plumbing underneath, so adding one more does not add complexity. A few integrations already run on it, and older ones will move over. Two paths, Tim said, depending on what the supplier needs.

The slow part is setup

Stefan Vasic, product manager for Citybreak, turned to what happens after the code is written. Getting a product live and sellable means creating organizations, sales channels and sales points, and setting commissions and rules. The work is spread across tools customers never see, and VISIT’s team usually does it for them.

He knows how long it takes. One of his first projects was a ferry operator with eight accounts across four markets and around 50 products per account. Setting it up took him roughly a month, “and that is an understatement.” The customer could have done it faster themselves, if the setup were not so complex.

Mistakes also surface late. A missing agreement in one channel can look like a broken integration and cost developers a day to track down.

The answer is a new setup service for Citybreak. You set up products, channels and commissions yourself, with validation built in and every connection traceable. Settings can be layered and overridden, so you need fewer channels, sales points and packages to do the same job. The aim is to bring onboarding down from about a month to about a week.

The team has interviewed the colleagues who do this work today, and customers are next. Pilot customers will be invited. Further out, the service ties into VISIT’s plan for an open platform, where you connect with suppliers and partners digitally, without waiting on anyone.

Where to start

List the suppliers you would like to package but cannot today. Ask whether they support OCTO. If they do not, ask your VISIT contact about the custom framework.