Hit Rail has delivered its H2O (Hermes to OSDM) Translator solution to SNCF Voyageurs and DB for the booking of seats on TGV/ICE France-Germany trains, a cooperation between DB and SNCF Voyageurs for high-speed trains. H2O is now facilitating the booking of seats for travel between France and Germany.
SNCF Voyageurs permit an access to TGV/ICE France-Germany trains through PAO (Portal for Access to Offers), which has now an OSDM API interface. This API is different from the previous interface using Hermes - UIC 918-1, which is still in use on the DB side. A solution was necessary to allow DB to reserve seats on TGV/ICE France-Germany trains on the new SNCF Voyageurs system using different API.
To solve that problem, Hit Rail has developed its H2O Translator, which transparently translates seat reservation messages between both protocols in real time.
Hit Rail is striving to help railways adopt the Passenger Ticketing Roadmap, which has specific goals to be realised before the end of 2025, one of them being the rollout of OSDM as a unified API for the passenger rail sector. H2O is planned to be used by other rail companies migrating their systems to the new API, as the whole sector gradually moves to implement OSDM.
OSDM (Open Sales and Distribution Model) is the industry-wide sales API which is being extensively adopted by the passenger rail sector to standardise electronic distribution across different companies and countries. OSDM will be used for sales via third party travel distributors and other railways, improving the competitiveness and ease of use of rail as an option for international travel, in line with the Passenger Ticketing Roadmap, European Green Deal and sustainability goals.
Hit Rail is specialised in delivering common IT solutions for rail transportation, providing interoperability, and assisting in the implementation of newer technical standards for better service to customers and improved competitiveness of the whole sector.
For more info please contact Hans van Walsem (vanwalsem@hitrail.com)