BCD Travel is giving outside developers the ability to craft
their own tech solutions to integrate with the travel management company's
systems. BCD's new SolutionSource Developer Hub opens the TMC's application
programming interfaces and developer tools to authorized third-party developers.
Those include certain startups, established travel technology providers, online
booking tools and BCD client corporations, according to the company.
"Authorized" is the key word there. Other
developers can explore BCD's technical documentation and sample code, but BCD
must authorize developers for security and other purposes before they can
access an API, said SolutionSource senior director Irina Matz.
These authorized developers can access BCD's shopping and
booking capabilities, itinerary and traveler identity information and policy
rules engine and then leverage them to create "highly specialized
solutions" in such areas as cost savings, duty of care and traveler
experience, BCD said.
By more deeply integrating BCD's APIs, these companies can
automate more processes, BCD said. For instance, a developer could apply
client-specific hotel, air and car rates and policies automatically within
BCD's shopping and booking capabilities.
Launched this week, Developer Hub enables access to the air,
car and hotel shopping and booking APIs, as well as BCD's itinerary data and
traveler profile APIs, Matz told BTN sister publication The Beat. Additional
APIs will open up in the future.
BCD expects existing partners in SolutionSource, the third-party
technology marketplace that launched
in 2018, to be among the first to take advantage. Many of those 19 partners—which
include price assurance operators, duty of care specialists and value-added tax
reclamation providers—already consume transaction and other data from BCD.