Designing New Ways for Selling Airline Tickets

Large body of recent work has been devoted to multi-agent systems utilized in e-commerce; in particular, autonomous software agents participating in auctions. In this context we modify a model agent-based e-commerce system so that it can serve as an airline ticket auctioning system. Such a system can be then combined with a Travel Support System that utilizes ontologically demarcated travelcontent. To achieve this goal, air travel data has to be demarcated utilizing an air travel ontology that has to support existing domain-specific real-world standards. One of such standards that steadily gains popularity in the air travel industry (and other travel areas) is the Open Travel Alliance (OTA) messaging system that defines, among others, the way that entities should communicate about air travel related issues. The aim of this paper is to outline our efforts leading toward creating an agent-based system for selling airline tickets that utilizes an air-travel ontology that matches the OTA messaging specification as well as satisfies procedures described in IATA manuals. Povzetek: Opisan je večagentni system za prodajo letalskih kart.