30 January 2009

Online itinerary maker opens up links

Online master itinerary creator TripIt has released its API, meaning third parties can now link up with the website.

TripIt has made its name in the last three years as a useful way to keep all sectors of a journey, from flight details to car hire, in one place. Users input their various travel arrangements with airlines, hotels and car hire and the site creates a master itinerary.

The release of the API, essentially a key to the site’s software, means third parties such as tour operators can now have a "Add to TripIt" button that sends all the details of a booking to the site which can then incorporate them into an overall master itinerary.

The API release will also allow a travel expense application to import travel activity straight into an expense report. The expense application needs only a single connection to TripIt to access this data and the cost of interfacing with the GDSs and other booking systems is avoided.

Another option now provided by the release is the ability by car rental companies to interface with TripIt when a customer wants to make a car rental booking so that they don’t need to look up their flight details when booking the car - the information is simply retrieved from TripIt.

A spokesman for the company said: "TripIt has always been about bringing together the various parts of a trip into a single, master itinerary. Our email import technology, the Itinerator, helps travellers automatically input information from different sources into a single place.

"Because TripIt is the only place where travellers can store all the components of a trip, we've had companies contacting us since we launched about how they could interface with us."

by Dinah Hatch