BSP: IATA's Billing and Settlement Plan Explained

 Whether you’re a leisure travel agent or a corporate TMC that deals with air tickets, you almost can’t avoid working with IATA’s Billing and Settlement Plan (BSP). In this post, we delve into the nuts and bolts of the BSP, unraveling everything you need to know – in plain English. What is BSP? The 

Hotel Groups Explained: Chains, Brands, and Ownership Models

Top Hotel Groups, Chains, and Brands: Number of Rooms, Revenue, and Loyalty Programs

 A few major hotel groups dominate the global hotel industry , each commanding a significant market share. In this article, we explore the competitive landscape of the world’s largest hospitality players — looking at the brands they operate, the strategies they use to grow, and how they compare 

MCP Servers for Developers: GitHub MCP, Playwright MCP

 The Model Context Protocol (MCP), released by Anthropic in November 2024, standardizes how AI systems interact with external tools. Today, many platforms are creating servers to expose their functionalities and data to AI agents using MCP instead of relying on custom one-to-one connections. In 

Corporate Travel Policy: How to Create and Enforce

 The 2025 GBTA and ASTA Business Travel ROI study indicates that companies with a structured, well-governed approach to business travel report up to 30 percent higher revenue. It also revealed that a strong travel policy becomes an important performance driver. Today, a travel policy isn't a dusty 

Becoming an AI-Driven Company: Our Journey and Experience

 Future-forward companies are always looking for ways to improve their processes, boost efficiency, and stay ahead of the curve. One way to achieve this is by adopting AI in different areas of the business. But AI transformation is anything but straightforward—it’s an ongoing journey full of 

Flight Booking Process: Structure, Steps, and Key Systems

 When a person books a flight, less than 15 minutes pass between their starting to fill in the search form and a booking confirmation appearing in their mailbox. From the airline side, it involves many events and systems to issue a ticket and make sure that the right person will board the plane. In 

Travelport API Integration: Practice Guide Based on Experience

 AltexSoft has extensive hands-on experience working with global distribution systems (GDS) APIs. Earlier, we shared our key takeaways from integrating with Sabre and Amadeus. Now, let’s turn to the last in the Big Tree—Travelport—and explore the specific challenges and nuances you’re likely to 

Graph Database in AI and RAG implementations

 Meaningful data isn’t just a collection of individual pieces of information—it’s the relationships between those pieces that are crucial for extracting insights. Graph databases—a type of NoSQL database—are designed to capture these relationships directly, making them a perfect fit for AI systems 

AI in Insurance: From Hype to Real Impact

 Though insurance is often seen as a paperwork-heavy, manual industry, it has always relied on data, mathematical analysis, and statistics. When the AI hype began, its potential to drive value for insurance seemed clear. As a result, many companies, from established carriers to insurtech startups, 

Google's Universal Commerce Protocol Explained

 Google released the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) in January 2026. Its purpose is to create a shared, open standard that lets AI agents and commerce systems work together throughout the entire shopping journey—from discovery and buying to post-purchase support—without custom links for every 

Travel Consortia: Full Guide for Agents and Advisors

 In today's cutthroat travel industry, independent agents face fierce competition from big OTAs and TMCs – yet many thrive by joining forces through travel consortia. These networks help level the playing field by connecting agents to a wealth of resources – from enhanced commissions and preferred 

Duty of Care in Business Travel: How It's Changing With Advancing Technology

 An important part of any corporate travel program is making sure employees are protected while carrying out business activities away from the office. When people travel for work, companies are expected to look after their safety, health, and general well-being, just as they would at home. One way 

Database Migration in Hospitality: Hands-on Experience Transferring Information for Hundreds of Hotels

 Moving data from one system to another is an inevitable part of modernization — and rarely a painless one. Industry statistics show that more than 80 percent of data migration projects miss their time or budget targets, largely due to the complexity involved. Whether the transfer is from 

Airline Revenue Management Software: Maximizing Earnings Per Seat and Passenger

 Airlines operate on razor-thin margins. Aircraft are expensive to acquire and maintain, seats—the core product—are perishable, and competition is intense. Amid these pressures, there is a narrow pricing corridor where fares are both competitive and economically viable. That’s why revenue 

Insurtech Market Overview: Segments, Trends, Key Players

 Insurtech is transforming insurance from a rigid, paperwork-heavy industry into a digital, data-driven ecosystem. By combining technology with insurance expertise, insurtech companies are redefining how policies are created, distributed, and experienced. In this post, we explore the current 

Hotelbeds API Integration: Hands-on Experience with a Leading Bed Bank

 In the ever-evolving travel industry landscape, the seamless integration of global accommodation providers is pivotal. OTAs, TMCs, and other travel resellers require real-time access to a wide range of accommodations to cater to the diverse needs of their customers. Hotelbeds, a leading 

Self-Supervised Learning Explained

 Most of the data around us—like text, images, audio, and transaction logs—exists in its raw form. It’s often messy and incomplete,  which makes it difficult to extract useful information from. Turning it into a format that machine learning models can learn from usually takes a lot of time and 

RevPAR, Occupancy Rate, ADR, and Other Hotel Metrics: How to Evaluate Your Property’s Performance

 In the hospitality industry, choosing the right metrics and carefully tracking them can help you, as the hotelier or hotel manager, to understand how your hotel is performing, compare it with your competitors, and possibly find the weak points and opportunities for improvement. So, the aim of this 

How to Create and Implement a Corporate Travel Program and Choose an Online Booking Tool

 For many companies, corporate travel is a source of profitable deals, long-lasting partnerships, and networking opportunities – as well as huge expenses. According to GBTA estimates published in mid-2025, global business travel spending is projected to exceed $1.5 trillion. It’s also a source of 

Access Control Matrix (ACM): A Practical Guide to Permission Design

 As organizations grow, access control often turns into a patchwork of one-off permissions, inherited rights, and undocumented exceptions. Over time, it becomes unclear who can access what—and why—making audits painful and security risks harder to identify. An access control matrix (ACM) helps 

The Good and Bad of ChromaDB for RAG: Based on Our Experience

 Retrieval augmented generation (RAG) is a context engineering approach that improves the accuracy and reliability of AI-generated responses. Large language models (LLMs), powering AI apps, can provide outdated information, mix up concepts, or even generate facts that aren’t true. RAG addresses 

Travel Advisors Market: Thriving or Struggling for Relevancy?

 The notion of the “death of a travel agent/advisor” has been a recurring theme since the emergence of Expedia and Travelocity in the late 1990s. Yet, three decades on, travel advisors are still very much in business. Today, AI tools reshape the industry and the question arises again: Is the travel 

AltexSoft Makes The Financial Times List of the Americas’ 300 Fastest Growing Companies 2026

AltexSoft Ranks 113th in Inc. Regionals Pacific for 2026

AI Reasoning Explained: End of "Chat" Models

Take a deep dive into the "internal monologue" of AI as it learns to think before it speaks. Discover how machines now unspool their own reasoning, navigate complex logic, and correct their own mistakes to solve problems once thought impossible.

Airbnb’s $200M Product Pivot: Reinvention or Overreach?

Airbnb once promised stays like a local – not a hotel guest. Now it’s adding services, experiences, and – yes, hotels.
So what exactly is Airbnb trying to be now? Is it evolving—or quietly turning into the very thing it once disrupted? And most importantly, will these moves unlock a new growth engine — or risk breaking the one that made the company successful?

Hidden Reason Travel Giants Are Buying Fintechs

Alex Medovoi, Founder and CEO of AltexSoft, discusses what tech startups can bring to the table, and see if there’s any investment potential in this space.

AltexSoft Blog

BSP: IATA's Billing and Settlement Plan Explained

Airline Revenue Management Software: Maximizing Earnings Per Seat and Passenger