Serai
the Serai Project · open integration infrastructure

One language for the systems that run hotels.

A shared data model and integration layer for an industry wired together one bespoke integration at a time. The core is being built to become an open standard — not another vendor dependency.

The problem

The wiring runs the hotel. Not the hotelier.

Hotel systems were never designed to work together. So staff re-type what the systems should be telling each other; changing any vendor is a project so painful it never happens; and the experiences a hotel wants to build — for guests, for colleagues — die because the stack has no way to carry them. The cost isn't a line item. It's control.

Point-to-point · today
The idea

One wire per system, not a web of point-to-point integrations.

Every system gets one wire to a shared model instead of many wires to each other. Systems in place stay in place; replace one and the others never notice — and for the first time, the stack follows the hotel's design, not the vendor's.

De-coupled · one wire to the shared model
What you gain

What one layer across every system is worth.

Decoupling

Replace a system and the others never notice; vendor roadmaps stop deciding what a hotel can do.

Message analysis

Every message across every seam, on record and searchable: the first honest view of what the systems actually say to each other.

Once the layer observes a seam

Real-time intelligence

An ordered, live event stream; cross-system and cross-property views built on live data, not month-end exports stitched by hand.

Once the layer observes a seam

Mini apps

Focused apps on the shared model: guest flows, upsells, colleague tools — launched without waiting on a vendor's roadmap.

Once systems speak the shared model

Custom translations

Amend and enrich data in flight, by rule: order what arrives out of sequence, anonymize a guest's name to the spa system, inject what a legacy POS can't carry. Only where the hotel says so.

With custom rules

Business routing

Route by rule: hold a message set until it's complete, sequence what a source system won't, send each event where it belongs.

With custom rules
The platform

The standard, the platform, the connectors.

One universal connector engine plus per-integration configuration; delivery direct connector-to-target, with an ordered event feed as the surface apps build on. The layer translates and routes — it is never a system of record.

The spec

One canonical model, versioned additively.

The Linked Commons Model is the canonical data and event schema of the Serai Project — the shared language every certified connector normalizes to.

reservation.created.jsonjson
{
  "specversion": "1.0",
  "type": "lcm.reservation.created",
  "source": "//serai/connector/apaleo/prop-001",
  "lcmprovenance": "apaleo",
  "data": {
    "snapshot": {
      "status": "confirmed",
      "arrival": "2026-08-01",
      "departure": "2026-08-04",
      "total": {
        "amount": 74250,
        "currency": "EUR"
      }
    }
  }
}
Illustrative sample payload.

Updates are strictly additive — fields are added, never removed; connectors pick up model updates automatically.

Adoption

Watch, translate, act — at the hotel's pace.

Every step is small, and every step is reversible.

Watch

Mirror or pass-through — nothing altered, the layer observes.

Translate

Systems speak the shared model — connect anything.

Act

Custom rules amend and route — only where the hotel says so.

The maturity gate

Open-sourcing happens at a published gate — not at anyone's discretion.

Draft — pending publication
Connector types proven in production12+3 running, 1 in progress
Independent deployments running 12+ months30 — pilot properties, under Niji Labs
External integrator certified1st0 — none yet
All three met ↓
At the gate

Apache-2.0 release of the versioned LCM spec, the connector engine, and the connectors — and transfer to the Serai Foundation, an independent, vendor-neutral body, under a charter drafted and public before the gate is reached.

Community

Built in the open, reported honestly.

A bi-weekly project update — progress, plainly stated.

Get involved

Start with an exploration session.

One session with the team: walk the architecture, map how a property, a product, or an integration fits the model, and decide together whether to go further. Operators, vendors, integrators, contributors — all welcome.

90 minutes · Your questions, the real architecture · No commitment on either side