Involvement in the XFT association
XFT (eXchange For Travel) is an association of numerous tourism companies. The association is responsible for developing and promoting the XFT language, designed to facilitate exchanges between tourism professionals (sales transactions, standardized files, etc.).
Our team has been involved in this adventure since its inception! Afidium is now a member of the Executive Committee, responsible for member support and maintenance of the XFT language.
The XFT language: the result of a great collaboration!
The eXchange For Travel language and association were born from the desire of several tourism companies to come together to shape exchanges between professionals. Tour operators, service providers, GDSs, and distributors then developed the XFT language, a common basis for their data exchanges.
This open source language is based on an XML grammar (stable, simple and flexible). It allows stakeholders to exchange data , whether it is information , for example on their products (catalog, price cache and availability), or various transactions (file management, document issuance, etc.).
Today, the XFT language is widely used among tourism professionals, particularly in the French market. For example, it is used by more than 50% of the tour operators on the Orchestra (Travelsoft) platform , accounting for nearly half of all transactions!
Afidium and eXchange For Travel
David Faveur and Patrick Rajaud, then at Galileo (founding members of the association), were actively involved from the beginning in the creation of the association and the XFT language. This involvement continued in 2005 with the creation of the Afidium company. Today, Afidium is of course one of the users of the language in the context of various solutions implemented (hotel or airline portals, system connections, etc.), but the company is also a member of the Executive Committee . We also continue to develop the language (development of standardized files, enrichment of the language, etc.) to meet new business needs.
Afidium also provides documentation for the XFT language (technical documentation, usable prototypes, etc.), as well as support and certification from which any member of the association can benefit (use, development or validation of XFT flows, practical advice, etc.).
Would you like to know more about the XFT language or association? Don't hesitate to contact us!