8 April 2021
The Sqills S3 Passenger inventory, reservation and ticketing SaaS platform is the first IT platform with functioning Open Sales and Distribution Model (ODSM) online implementation based on the specification recently designed by UIC railway carriers and ticket distributors.
After joining the initiative in late 2020, Sqills contributed to the technical standard to promote interoperability. This effort has resulted in the first working OSDM implementation, which will become available to S3 Passenger customers in upcoming releases.
Marc Guigon and Vittorio Carta, Chair and Vice-Chair of OSDM, respectively, said: “For OSDM, 2020 was a year of specifying the standard, and we are now proving that 2021 can be the year of its implementation. We are excited and proud of the example Sqills has set for contributing carriers for how quickly and relatively easily the OSDM online standard can be implemented. We look forward to seeing other partners follow soon. It proves that for a capable backend system, the OSDM online interface covers all relevant principles. The ticket distributors in the OSDM working group are now preparing to integrate the APIs based on this first implementation. This is a big step forward in the European Year of Rail and for public transport in general, as OSDM is multimodal by design”.
Johan Nieuwerth, Sqills Co-Founder and S3 Product Owner, said:
“Supporting cross-operator cooperation to improve passenger comfort and compete with car and air travel is a key priority for the public transport industry. We have embraced OSDM as a contributing factor to this goal. Not only does the standard reflects the S3 Passenger capabilities and essentially unifies the distributor-to-carrier dialogue, it also aligns with S3’s native multi-inventory features. Now that inventory managed in S3 Passenger can be distributed via OSDM, the next step is making other carriers using OSDM available within S3 Passenger. This is an interesting option for operators using S3 Passenger who want to connect with other inventories bilaterally. Sqills will make a so-called “sandbox environment” available to the OSDM working group. This sandbox will be powered by S3 Passenger. We believe this first step will help increase the speed of adoption of the OSDM standard”.
About OSDM
The aims of the Open Sales and Distribution Model (OSDM) are to substantially simplify the booking process for customers of public transport and to reduce complexity and distribution costs for distributors and carriers.
OSDM strengthens rail and public transport as a convenient and ecological means of transport by simplifying distribution. Finally, it lays a solid foundation which can be extended to the distribution of other means of transport.
OSDM takes a sectoral approach. The existing commercial products and online distribution/carrier systems of railways such as BeNe, ČD, DB, DSB, ÖBB, PKP IC, Renfe, Rail Delivery Group, SBB, SJ, SNCF, Trenitalia and others, as well as distribution solutions provided by Amadeus, Sabre, SilverRail, Sqills, Trainline, Travelport and others, were carefully studied to guarantee interworking with this upcoming standard. Furthermore, the Hermes/Hosa ecosystem for reservations, as well as existing UIC leaflets, were carefully examined and considered while designing the API.
The OSDM specification consists of two parts: the offline model and the online API. The OSDM specifications and APIs are open source and are freely available to all interested parties at https://unioninternationalcheminsdefer.github.io/OSDM/.
About S3 Passenger
S3 Passenger is the leading global off-the-shelf rail and bus inventory, reservation and ticketing system. Powerful and innovative to exceed the needs of operators in the years to come, flexible enough through APIs to connect with existing infrastructures.
Thousands of out-of-the-box features allow rail and bus users to benefit from proven technology, short time to market, and powerful self-services. S3 Passenger is a fully scalable and modular platform.
With more than 34 operators across eight countries, the S3 Passenger community continues to grow as S3 Passenger quickly becomes the public transport industry’s system of choice. S3 Passenger supports the public transport industry’s goal of becoming the customers’ preferred mode of transport.
Pre-Covid-19, S3 Passenger processed over 4.7 billion journey searches and 52.5 million passenger segments. Customers include Irish Rail, SNCF/Ouigo, Thalys/IZY, SNCF Junior & Cie, Eurostar, VIA Rail, SNCF/TER, Blablabus, Railway Delivery Group, Chiltern Railways, CrossCountry, GrandCentral, Northern (Arriva Rail North), Greater Anglia, West Midlands Trains (WMT) (London Northwestern Railway, West Midlands Railway), ScotRail, Caledonian Sleeper, North Eastern Railway, Avanti Westcoast, East Midlands Trains, South Western Railway, Great Western Railway, Heathrow Express, TransPennine Express, Transport for Wales, Southern and Southeastern.
(Source: https://www.sqills.com/)
