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"Despite the challenges unfolding at a regional level in the Middle East and North Africa, hoteliers were still able to raise rates enough in February to achieve average rate growth worldwide and capture more bookings than last year. "Consumers are not only traveling, but they are also willing to spend more. Additionally, the corporate market is booking more groups and meetings business from corporations of all sizes as February bookings, rate and revenue growth was coupled with increases in length of stay and booking lead time. Even though at the time, hoteliers continue to raise rates, but people are still continuing to travel and spend money. The traveling public understands that their leisure time is valuable and are willing to pay for peace of mind. Also, bookings made through online channels provide a perfect virtual marketplace for travel inventory sellers.

This article post on the year of 2011, it said that the global GDS hotel bookings grew substantially by 23.5%, which driving revenue up by 36.8% in two years. And the monthly growth of more than 20% through July in 2010 to now. At the same time, the length of stay and booking lead time are also expanded. Compared with the booking rates in 2010, the business travel rates rose about 7% and rates paid by leisure travelers for hotel rooms increased 3.6%. The booking mostly through the ADS or online channels were all declined due to varieties of factors such as regional unrest in the Middle East and North Africa. Despite these challenges, the hotel managers still tried to achieve the high booking rates and capture more bookings than last year. Consumers are not only travelling , but they are also willing to spend more. People are tend to travel by groups in business or meetings, this will increase the length of stay and booking lead time. GDS bookings represent the mostly corporate market, despite of all the problems which could influence the travel rates, bookings made through online channels like GDS made growth rates keep increasing both in tourist on or off season.

This article speaks about, for the most part, how bookings done through systems are now only at an all time high, but continue to grow substantially.  ADS's on the other hand, declined from January's levels declined due a variety of factors including regional unrest, etc. However, growth bounced back in February and even set a new record for North America. Also, despite all the challenges throughout the middle east and north Africa, average rate growth was still achieved throughout the month of February and even outperform last years bookings for that month.

This article suggests that consumers now purchase in a more customized why with new technologies offered through applications and data plans through consumer's phones, tables and laptops. Airline consumers have recently changed their purchasing habits to choices such as in-flight WiFi, priority boarding, premium seating, meals or doubling their miles instead of the traditional schedules and fares. Airlines have veered to selling these types of customized travel services through direct selling to consumers and have eliminated the use of global distribution systems GDS. Airlines have found that the use of GDS's are more expensive to both the airline and consumer and that GDS's technology has yet to evolve to enable the kind of customer-focused and customized shopping that other industries have embraced. Now GDS's has ask that the Department of Transportation DOT to protect its market dominance by having DOT force airlines to give them, free of charge, the ability to sell options services as checked bags, seat upgrades or club access. Airlines believe that consumers should know what the are paying for.

This article claims that GDS systems are actually limiting consumer choices. The author suggests that using new distribution technologies that connect us directly to reservation systems would be better for consumers because it provides them with all the choices the airlines can offer, without the extra charge. Purchasing a ticket through GDS is three times more expensive than purchasing the ticket directly. Airlines, which aim to support consumer choice and transparency with its customers, try to tailor travel options to accommodate a passenger's individual needs. However, GDS opposes this movement by urging airlines to use outdated equipment that requires its due fees, which in turn raises the cost of travel for consumers.  

In the late eighteen-century, customers use postal service to reserve lodging. After that telegraph became effective way to book and reserve. Until 1940s, airlines build a relationship with travel agents and their hotels, an original network was formed. In the end of the 1970s, the airlines provide electronic system for travel agencies to checking availability and reserving airline seats which we called GDS. It offers efficient and costless booking channel. On the other hand, the hotel suffer three commission costs for a single booking which are travel agent, switching company and GDS proprietor. In 1994, Hyatt developed internet distribution system (IDS) which reduce some costs but add intermediary cost. In the last century, the OTAs became a new channel. Customers booking is variables and each channel have its own attendant costs. The hotel should flexible when dealing with the rate, meanwhile carefully monitored the cost of each channel. Therefore the automated channel management system become a trend. Softeware systems now can analyze real-time market data and adjust rate across all the channels 24 hours a day.

This article identified some factors that happening in the market which drives a trend for increased bookings through non-GDS hotels. Business travel buyers are increasingly looking at newer opportunities to cut travel costs. Business travel slowdown imminent, The Global Business Travel Association forecasts that the business travel growth is expected to slow in 2012. And business-travel growth will outpace anticipated GDP growth, despite uncertainties in the economy. Rate negotiation process is getting increasingly tougher With a declining market demand, hotels try hard to remain profitable, and have toughened the rate negotiations with buyers. Many are exploring alternative strategies to generate savings from their hotel programs. Some buyers are considering alternative negotiating strategies to derive savings. Due to the demand for wider range of rates to aid policy compliance, corporates are looking for a better value proposition in using hotel aggregators. Hotel aggregation offers key value proposition The latest versions of HotelHub indicate that hotel aggregation offers a major advantage in corporate hotel reservation process. GDS firms and non-GDS are realizing the gap, and aggregation makes Travel Managers save lot of time and cost in servicing booking requests. This article identified some factors that happening in the market which drives a trend for increased bookings through non-GDS hotels. Business travel buyers are increasingly looking at newer opportunities to cut travel costs. Business travel slowdown imminent, The Global Business Travel Association forecasts that the business travel growth is expected to slow in 2012. And business-travel growth will outpace anticipated GDP growth, despite uncertainties in the economy. Rate negotiation process is getting increasingly tougher With a declining market demand, hotels try hard to remain profitable, and have toughened the rate negotiations with buyers. Many are exploring alternative strategies to gener

This article is a good one that demonstrates how GDS are now more often used than times before. The article states that the 2011 Global Travel Agent GDS study demonstrates how important GDS platform and shopping Displays are to the travel agents. They stated the 84 percent of those who took the survey stated that they are using the GDS just as much or even more than they did in the pass and 35 % of these stated that they were using it more than they did in the pass. The article explained how these numbers have greatly increased since 2009 where only 26% agents admitted that they used the GDS systems more than before. This study is 2011 reaffirmed Travel Click's projection, which was that GDS hotel bookings would surpass %50 million in the year 2011. This was far more than that of 2010. The article goes on to explain how the GDS will improve the booking and services of the industry all around. Furthermore, the article went on to explain a worldwide survey conducted for agents who were among the largest GDS in the world and some 495 responses were collected. The survey was conducted by Phoenix Marketing International, which is and independent marketing research firm Travel agents were indicated that promotional messages were effective and prompt during bookings and 66% of these agents request additional information about it. While, 68% of these agents looked into the GDS for more information. After this survey was complete the agents who were aware of promotional messages, 46% of them made North American bookings within 3 months as a result of the promotional messaging and 44% made non- North American bookings. The survey itself shows that promotional messages were and excellent way to get the agents interested. In the article it is quoted how the promotional messages acts in a chain reaction to reach the agent and then the customer, which allows sales all over the world.

GDS provides a perfect virtual marketplace for travel inventory sellers such as hotels, airlines, and car rental systems to showcase their wares to a global Internet travel audience. The GDS is a natural outlet for hotels, resorts, and even smaller inns that want to increase revenue and online marketing exposure. As the GDS channel produces one of the highest average daily rates of any booking channel, there is a huge opportunity for hoteliers to influence travel agents through the GDS at the point-of-sale.

Yes, GDS is of great importance for tourism development. It provides such a huge market of tourism information for customers, airlines, hotels, travel agents and any parts included in the tourism. Someone said that GDS will end travel agent, however, in my opinion; they have their own advantages and will supplement each other in the future.

It introduce that as the reservation online, GDS become more and more important. It makes booking tickets more efficiency than travel agents. Global Distribution Systems is a worldwide computerized reservation network which used as a single point of access for reserving airline seats, rooms, rental cars, and other travel related items by travel agents, online reservation sites, and large corporations. From this article, the news is that now advertisers have a new level of sophisticated functionality and transparency for GDS ad placement that is currently unrivaled elsewhere online. Both the ad serving and travel agent hotel shopping environments have been identified and leveraged unique predictive characteristics in travelclick and doubleclick. About the result of the research and corresponding development there are two improvements for advertising on the GDS. The first one is DRU, Dynamic Rate Update, instantaneously inserts a hotel's BAR-specific to actual check-in date-into the ad copy displayed to the audience. And the second one is a next-generation methodology isolates and identifies advertising-enabled travel agencies and measures the hotel booking revenue that they produce in participating GDS. Now the American Society of Travel Agents (ASTA) has been helpful in developing travelclick's DRU and advertising-enabled hotel booking methodology. Because today market competition is very high, best available rates to travel agents for bookings made on the GDS is very necessary.

Yes. I really like the Global Distribution System which makes our life more easier. When I plan for a vacation, I could search the information from the system and choose from different options and make the decision to book tickets and make a reservation in hotels.

This article discusses what travel agents think about the enhanced ability of both corporate and leisure based travel agencies to sell airline ancillaries because of improved Global Distribution Systems' technologies. Ancillaries are products and services that airlines sell to gain additional revenue on top of your ticket price. Ancillaries have become increasingly popular in the airline industry because of the sky rocketing price of jet fuel. To keep ticket prices down airlines are "unbundling" items from the overall experience. This presents them with an opportunity to turn a profit by charging fees for bags (carry on, checked, additional), on board food and drink, credit card purchases, headphones. It seems like everything you encounter from when you arrive at the airport to when you disembark the plane has a fee. This phenomenon is especially present in Low cost carriers such as Spirit, Air Tran, Jet Blue, etc. However there are consumers who disagree with this additional costs as is apparent in Southwest's continuous marketing campaign. I'm sure everyone has seen the commercials with Southwest representatives 'flagging' down unnecessary fees in order to promote their 'bags fly free' campaign. Anyhow the reason I am explaining ancillary revenue is because travel agents are now starting to sell more ancillary products such as hotel accommodations, travel insurance, rental cars because of GDS technologies. They can track the sale of fees through EMD (Electronic miscellaneous Documents) which is the current industry standard. In the article some agents state that the EMDs are hard to understand and use. I believe until the EMDs become "seamless and easy to use" there will exist some hesitation to sell airline ancillaries. However on the other hand the article states that Travelport is working towards a simple and uniform platform called Travelport Universal API/Desktop. Once this comeplete perhaps more agents will feel comfortable selling ancillaries. This is a goo

I still remember when most airlines used to include breakfast or dinner for their passengers including alcoholic beverages well that doesn't happen any more. I believe when Travelport Universal Desktop becomes available it would become more clear to travel agencies the transaction process and for the consumers what products and services they are ofering.

I too miss the days of free sodas and peanuts. "Sigh-" sometimes its the little things in life that bring the most joy. I agree I think the new Travelport Universal Desktop will be a valuable tool if utilized correctly.

This article is about GDS and cruise industry. What this article talks about is that UK's cruise market leader P&O Cruises, Cunard and Princess Cruises, will end its distribution through Amadeus, which is one of the largest GDSs in the world, in November 2011. The reason behind this is because these cruise lines figured out that almost 95 percent of its cruises are sold via its own website so they think GDS is no longer necessary for them. However, other major cruise lines such as Carnival Cruises, Royal Caribbean Cruises, and Norweigian Cruises will still continue to feature on the GDS. According to a spokesman of Amadeus, the company keeps investing in distribution solutions, easier and more secure cruise booking application for cruise lines. This article shows how cruise distribution in the UK is shifting. This change would probably affect not only cruise lines but other sectors such as hotels, airlines, etc. Yet, it is still uncertain if the impact of the change on cruise industry worldwide will be significant. Still, most of cruise lines including the three major cruise operators which have large market share in the cruise industry use GDS; as well as, it is doubtful if cruisers are willing to go on a same cruise ship over and over. Cruisers look for various cruise options while booking online so they will be more likely to visit GDS-based website where they can search for various cruise ships throughout the world; rather than to visit website where there are much less cruise options. Everything will be clear after we see if the UK's cruise operator is successful.

CCRA has made modifications online to assist travel agents in increasing their income. CCRA offers a 15% commission to all travel agents, and works with hotel partners to ensure travel agents are offering a better price than what consumers can find online themselves.

The GlobRes support team is very helpful and efficient. GlobRes gives us easy and efficient access to the GDS and IDS worlds. GlobRes works to ensure your hotel gets the best from GDS connections guaranteeing you receive the maximum number of hotel reservations. GlobRes provide an advanced training session available for hoteliers in 5 languages, full consultation when you sign up for GlobRes GDS, controlling your hotel rates and room availability from one simple web-based control centre. Each hotel is assigned a dedicated account manager to lead the hotel through implementation and is available at all times should there be any questions or concerns.

A significant change since the study in 2009, it says that there is a significant change that more than 26 percent of travel agents stated that they used their GDS more often. It means that GDS has become more and more important in the hospitality industry, since the generation has changed to 80's. Travel agent has once again confirmed their confidence in GDS shopping.

In 2009 the GDS usage declined from 98% to 79%. ALthough there has not been a demand to use this technology, there has been a demand in the first quarter in 2012. There has been an increase because of corporate business demand. GDS is being used to transfer room inventory to global distribution partners as well as travel agents and OTA's. Hotels using the GDS technology offer a percentage to a client instead of a fixed rate. This happens as long as companies have access to the hotel's system everyday. According to Robert Cole, The GDS system is notgoing anywhere because of its unique solutitons to hotels and travelers. It makes it easier for everyone.

This article is about how global distribution systems are still in demand even though they were said to be dying out. Industry leaders thought that with the development of online travel agencies, GDS's would soon be out of business. This isn't the case though. Well it is proven that member travel agencies have been using GDS's less this could be linked to the economy. The people who are purchasing travel through online travel agencies are still using the GDS every day. Business travel is also up in the past 10 years and also an increase in business travelers extending their stays for leisure. With that leisure and corporate traveler are help keeping GDS's alive. But GDS's would be even more profitable if they lowered their transaction fees.

The GDS has decreased steadily over the past decade, but recent studies have shown that there has been a small increase. The increase is thought to be due to corporate travel.  Many hotels are trying to increase the use of the GDS through dynamic pricing models. This model offers a percentage off the hotels best available rate depending on what the demand is. The GDS provides many benefits like facilitating the online search process, offering immediate access to information without using a marketing budget, and high sense of security. The only downfall is that the distribution costs are too high, because transaction fees usually are around $5. 

The International Air Transport Associate (IATA) at their annual general meeting in Beijing have had enough with the outdated Global Distribution Systems technology. The new Director General Tony Tyler indicated that in the 70's the system was cutting edge technology expanding distribution for airlines but years later the technology lacks innovation and must be brought up to date with airline product differentiation. This can be done by adopting new standards through XML messaging schema. Farelogix has donated XML through Open Axis, an organization that promotes the XML technology for linking airlines with distributors, similar to the technology that American Airlines has been using. IATA indicates that this year they will define the foundation standards in partnership with the GDSs, a necessary progression.

This article is about an Australian Hotel company, Metro Hotel, that recently adopted Sabre Hospitality Solutions Central Reservation System which has caused an almost 70% increase in bookings. Using Sabre's technology has done a number of major things such as enable their rooms and rates to be easily distributed through all four major GDSs and as well as many online travel agents. Additionally the time Metro Hotel takes to reload rates has decreased from a week to one day. The more advanced and improved Sabre system also allows for a greater volume of information and images to be displayed for each property, targeting a wider audience. Overall the article is a testament to how technology in the hospitality industry like CRS and GDS can greatly impact the business.

iTesso is a cloud-based PMS which offers interface with the property's CRS, GDS, and other third-party systems.  What caught my eye in this article is that it specifies that it is Windows compatible and offers high-level security.  Compared with WebRezPro, iTesso seems to be a better system in that it claims to be appropriate for all hotel chains regardless of size, secure, able to be updated to stay relevant, and covers all of the functionalities that a PMS should be able to handle.

The limits of GDS's are discussed in this article, as well as the lack of initiative of the big 4 GDS's to adopt and develop newer and more updated systems because of their prevalence in travel. According to the article, the face of the GDS systems look nearly the same as they did in the 1970s, and the airlines systems are not up-to-date enough to meet consumer demands. The author points to consumer trends in the demand for personalization, package variety, and simply the desire for more packages.

Global Distribution System is an outdated technology, that cannot be consistent with the ways travel is purchased nowadays, according to International Air Transport Association (IATA). Airlines are constantly adding service or 'bunbundling' their products. The ability to buy priority boarding or seating options, meals and baggages cannot be reflected through the GDS, thus the only way to purchase them is through the airline website. This is harmful to both airlines and customers. Even though, GDS has played an important role, it is time to start developing a new product that will 'present full product or data offerings via a new interface'. IATA is being involved into creating the necessary standards before starting to work on a new platform. GDS-managed technology is slowing the process down. However, there may be some legal issues involved in exchanging the system, which has to be resolved before the launch of a new technology.

"Travelport has taken steps to increase the availability of negotiated hotel rates in its system." This article discusses the inconsistencies often found in GDS online bookings (specifically those who use Galileo and Worldspan) and the steps Travelport is taking to remedy these inconsistencies. Some contributing factors include "...hotels' failure to load the data into the Property Management System (PMS) or Central Reservation System (CRS), the rate not being set up correctly or missing code information, or inaccurate code information being entered." Travelport has reached out to hotels for support in this endeavor, including "...conducting rate audits with hotels, designing and implementing new processes and removing the availability of outdated and duplicated codes." I think that this is a smart move for Travelport and its subsidiaries that will motivate other GDS's to audit their systems for greater consistency in bookings. Having worked with reservations and front office in a hotel utilizing third party bookings, I could not begin to tell you the level of frustration that sometimes occur in explaining to guests why certain rates differ so greatly for the same time period. On the reservations side, it often takes hours to manually adjust and update these rates, so I am sure that this will be a great help to all parties involved.

Scoot, a low cost carrier based in Singapore, has signed a distribution agreement with Amadeus. Amadeus, according to their website, is the world's leading supplier of IT solutions that enable success in the travel and tourism industry. Scoot hopes with this partnership that they are able to "…deliver more budget air travel options via [their] network in the region."

This article discusses how GDS's are still going strong in US Hotel industry. 55 million hotel reservations made last year through GDS according to Travelclick in e-commerce service provider. PhoCusWright estimates that GDS is represent 10% of all hotel revenue. Furthermore according to a study by the American Hotel and lodging Association 1.3 billion in fees were paid by hotels on base revenue of about 100 billion. The article states that these fees are usually passed on to the travel agents. Comparably bookings made through online travel agencies is nearly double that figure at approximately 2.5 billion on the same 100 billion of base revenue. The article concludes by saying that business travelers tend to stay at properties with higher average daily rates pushing up the average chance action on the GDS bookings.

With the growth of mobile phones and apps, there is no doubt a boom in online mobile bookings. Apps like Travelocity, Expedia and orbitz, makes it easy to search, compare and book all from your mobile phone. According to the article, online travel booking generate close to six Billion dollars in revenue each year. Out of that, 10 percent of bookings is conducted on mobile devices. Within the next two years, the market is likely to grow to about 30% from According to Amit Somany, companies began "investing on this mobile platform for the past four years but the investments had actually taken off only in the past 12-18 months." Some companies are surprised that people are going out and doing research from their mobile phones before marketing and advertisement plans were in motion. They noticed that more and more people are researching hotels and airfares while they are on the move. While commuting on a train in NY, people can research a possible trip to San Fransisco, without wasting any time at work. On the go, Expedia has simplified their app checkout process in order to "serve our consumers better."