Overture is collaborating with the OpenTravel Alliance (OTA), which recently joined the Linux Foundation and Overture as a member, to solve a long-standing challenge in the travel industry: data interoperability. For years, the travel sector has struggled to standardize location data for hotels, attractions, and other points of interest across a complex ecosystem of providers.
Overture’s Global Entity Reference System (GERS) and Bridge Files provide the open map data infrastructure to solve this problem. GERS assigns a single, reliable ID to any physical place, and Bridge Files connect that ID to existing systems, making it easy to link disparate datasets.
A Common Language for Travel Locations
Overture provides the infrastructure to create a single source of truth for location data in the travel industry.
- A Global Places Dataset: Overture provides a foundational dataset of over 60 million places of interest with names, categories, and addresses. This creates an open, global source of truth that the travel industry can contribute to and build upon. The data flows into applications from Overture members, already reaching billions of consumers.
- GERS for Unified IDs: GERS assigns a unique, persistent ID to any physical location, so a hotel or rental car station gets a single ID for use across all platforms and systems. When OTA members contribute their authoritative data, Overture assigns a GERS ID, standardizing the information for use by members like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Meta, Microsoft, TomTom, and Esri.
- Bridge Files for Easy Integration: The travel industry relies on many different ID systems. Bridge Files connect these existing identifiers to GERS IDs through a simple join, avoiding complex and costly data conflation. Our open data foundation allows anyone to match their data to GERS IDs.
Unlocking New Use Cases for the Travel Industry
Our immediate goal is to align Overture’s data definitions with OpenTravel’s object models, creating a simple adoption path for the industry. Longer-term, as travel suppliers update their information, those updates could flow automatically into Overture via OpenTravel’s compiler.
This foundational work enables several key use cases:
- A Connected Travel Ecosystem: GERS IDs create a seamless web of data, improving coordination across travel discovery, booking, and in-trip experiences. A hotel booking system could share precise location data with a ride-sharing app or tour operator using a common GERS ID.
- Richer Map Experiences: A stable, open base map allows developers to add travel-specific data layers. With OTA, the travel sector can align on schemas for details like hotel amenities or real-time rental car availability, all linked to a GERS ID.
- Future Innovations: Forward-looking applications include lightweight open standards that make business AI agents easily discoverable. These standards, anchored by GERS IDs, allow AI agents to interact seamlessly across platforms. For instance, inHotel, LinksRez, and Hilton are leveraging GERS for use cases that will enable travel AI assistants to directly engage with hotels’ AI agents to ask questions or make a reservation, opening a new frontier for automated travel services.
Our collaboration with the OpenTravel Alliance is a key step in building the open, interoperable infrastructure that modern industries need. By combining Overture’s foundational map data and reference framework with OTA’s industry standards, we are enabling a more interoperable and innovative future for travel.
Join the Overture Community
Overture Maps is building an interoperable open data ecosystem for map data. We invite business listings managers, Places data syndicators, and all map data holders to contribute their datasets. Help create a definitive open resource that becomes the foundation of local search, navigation, and countless other location-based applications. Email us at info@overturemaps.org if you’re interested in contributing.
The future of mapping is open, collaborative, and built together. Join us in making it happen. Visit our website to learn more about our work and become a member.
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Interested in using Overture data? Check out the Explorer tool, a no-code option for inspecting Overture data and metadata, the data guides for an overview of our six data themes, and the “Getting Data” section of our documentation.
