XML - What is it and what's it for?

The term is being used more and more in the travel industry by techies and suppliers alike.  Usually if you ask a supplier what it means they'll answer, "oh don't ask me, that's for the techies" and if you ask a techie they'll come out with as much waffle and technical jargon they can to confuse you.

One thing that is made clear is that having XML in your website jumps up the price of the site by around £10,000 and somehow makes it a super dupa bookable website.

Well XML stands for eXtensible Markup Language.  In a very simplistic explanation, it is a way of writing messages that computers can use to talk to each other.  So how does it work in your travel website? 

It's far more simple than it sounds.  Your website will use XML messages to talk to your suppliers computers, and get results or perform an action.  Typically the process will be;

• user makes a search on your website, e.g. LHR to JFK
• your website creates an XML message that it send to your suppliers, requesting search results relevant to the users search.
• the supplier uses an XML response to send you back their results, which usually include all details especially price.
• the user selects one of these results to book and the website sends another XML message to the supplier with the customer details and the flight id, this is then booked by the supplier, who replies with a booking reference.

In a very simple way, that's all it is.  It's far more complex when it comes to implementing it, which is why it costs so much to do.

But at least you now know what it is.  XML is simple a messaging language, used by suppliers in the travel industry (and of course used extensively in other ways) to allow bookings to come through websites.

For more information, or to order your own travel website, please just contact us!