Airline data is at the heart of the travel and hospitality industry. When you combine it with location-based information and the untethered freedom of mobility, you set the stage for innovation.

Imagine mobile apps that use flight schedules, loyalty programs, upcoming trips, weather info, passenger location, membership status, social feed, flight updates, car rental and hotel information to handle all the moving targets travelers are constantly trying to hit. What new possibilities for applications might emerge to simplify travel for passengers, and to create new revenue opportunities for travel and hospitality businesses?

Enterprise developers will have a chance to consider the possibilities during the AT&T and American Airlines Travel Hackathon (“Travel Hack”), where they will have access to the AT&T Location Information Services (LIS) Hybrid beta API and the American Airlines TravelAPI for the first time. Travel Hack is a 32-hour hackathon set to lift off during South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive, Austin’s annual creativity-fest for technology and things digital, on March 9-10, 2013.

Innovative uses for hyper-local data

To make your apps more effective at the hyper-local level where travelers spend most of their time — inside the airports, hotels, and convention centers – the LIS hybrid beta API combines WiFi with cellular GPS technologies to allow navigation both inside and outdoors to provide the best available device location. This cross-carrier API can be used across the popular mobile platforms.

API Functionality includes:

  • Location: Request- and lookup-APIs supporting mobile devices, landline phones, geocoding/reverse geocoding and extended address
  • Geo-fencing – APIs allow users to create and manage an unlimited number of geo-fences, defined as circles, complex polygons, point-radius and address-radius
  • Proximity – APIs enable proximity as a unique capability to triggering in three dimensions rather than typical latitude-/longitude-based offerings — for example, proximity triggering with Wi-Fi access points.
  • Messaging – Fully integrated messaging APIs can be used for SMS and in-app IP messaging
  • Privacy – APIs for privacy and opt-in/opt-out management
Improving the travel experience

American Airlines is opening up APIs during TravelHack that give developers access to its coveted AAdvantage® data and flight information. Hoping to revolutionize the way travel data is used, American Airlines is the first major airline to make its proprietary data available to developers, giving them an opportunity to build new types of apps designed to improve the customer experience.

Take off at Travel Hack

Sound like fun? Register here to be among the first to program with these unreleased APIs for a chance at cash and other prizes. There’s no predicting what developers will come up with. Keep an eye on this blog for more updates, and visit our Enterprise Toolbox for more of the tools, APIs and sample code enterprise developers use to mobilize their organizations.

If yours is a travel and hospitality industry business, what kinds of apps would you like to see? As a traveler, do you have a wish list for apps and solutions that could make your life easier? Let us know in comments