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1. Introduction

This documents describes a standard for exchanging traveling and booking information, called AlpineBits®.

AlpineBits® builds upon established standards:

  • client-server communication is done through stateless HTTPS (the client POSTs data to the server and gets a response) with basic access authentication 1 and

  • traveling and booking information is encoded in XML, following version 2015A of the OpenTravel Schema 3, 4, 5 (from here on called OTA2015A) by the OpenTravel Alliance 2.

At the current version of the standard, the scope of AlpineBits® covers exchanging the following types of information:

  • room availability (FreeRooms),

  • reservation inquiries (GuestRequests),

  • room category information (Inventory) and

  • prices (RatePlans).

AlpineBits® relies on its underlying transport protocol to take care of security issues. Hence the use of HTTPS is mandatory.