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The concept of this article is totally new to me. Air travel contributes at least three percent of global greenhouse gases and it is still rising. However, it is really good to know that there are certain airlines begin to pay attention on this issue. Dutch airline nowdays has used recyceled cooking oil(biofuel) to power planes. In fact, the plane had a 50-50 mix of biofuel and regular jet fuel in one of its four engines, which help cut carbon emission making by the planes while also help reduce nagative impact on biodiversity and food supply. In a word, KLM airline really shows a model of "green airline".

Commentary - Corporate meetings and events are on the rebound after the recession, but many organizations are also rethinking how technology can help them plan a more budget-friendly and productive business meeting.

Since corporate meetings and events have been suffered recession for quit a while, new they are facing a revolution of high-tech event planing to be more cost saving and more productive. This article mainly introduces those tochnology tools like database tools, attendee registration tools, video/web conferencing tools and even room diagramming tools for event and meeting planing oever the Internet.

After September 2011 alot of changes have occured in airline and airports throughout the world. TSA has purchased, trained, and introduced innovative machinery that can easily detect authorized items inside luggages. The US governement have spend alot of money also to simply protect the nation from terrorists and any form on violence especially in the hospitality and tourism industry. Alot of th airlines have changed the way they used to operate before the attacks; for instance food is no longer served on airplanes, and more fees are charged for luggages and definitely more screening in airport terminals. The introduction of air marshalls and new machinery have definitely changed the perspective of traveling nowadays, travelers have to wait longer to be screened and to even get out of the plane after the plane have landed at its destination. On a positive note, everything that have changed is for our own safety as citizen of the US and i personally believe moew things should be implemented if it can only improve the way we are being protected.

In this article, Christine Negroni discusses the future of airline booking and travel. Over the last ten years, there has been a shift from telephone reservations to computer reservations with the birth of the World Wide Web. With new mobile devices and smart phones, customers are now trying to find the newest, easiest way to work a plane ticket or a vacation. Companies have to strategically plan how they will market to thei customers. FOr leisure, companies will want to reach them through Facebook and Twitter. With the internet, airlines today need to focus on their image. The image is just as important as the product you sell, or the plane ticket the customer purchases. With Youtube, anyone can post whatever they'd like, so hospitality companies and airlines especially, need to be weary. Because the aviation industry is so large, the internet give customers and companies a way to interact on a deeper, more personal level.

Wireless networking is a important application of computer networks. And this news is very interesting. Because with my own experiences during traveling, I found out that a lot of passengers do not want to turn-off their phones during their flying time, some may choose to turn to the fight mode. And when I took Qatar airline, I found out that they install the wireless services for people to send message or make phone calls. That was the first time I experience this kind of service, I was very excited but calmed down when I saw the expensive fees I need to pay if I want to use. So I think it is time for FAA to look ways which can satisfy travelers' demand through possible new allowances.

I am one of those Americans that have a hard time disconnecting from technology when boarding an aircraft. I usually fly American Airlines and a majority of their airplane offer Wi-Fi available for purchase, I don't mind paying $12.95 so that I can stay entertain, I can't wait to hear the chime at 10,000 feet followed with the message from the flight crew telling me that "it is now safe to use electronic devices." On May 16th, 2012, Virgin Atlantic announced that passengers would be able use cell phones onboard the airplane utilizing VoIP. Can you imagine this technology aboard a plane from Los Angeles to New York? http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Virgin-Atlantic-Cell-Phones-Planes-In-Flight-Cost,15642.html

This article discusses how an airport in New Haven, CT uses a Robot to sanitize it's planes. As of March, no other airports were using such technology. The robots get rid of 99.9% of germs, are quicker than a sanitation staff, and are cheaper in the long term. The robot can be control via remote.

The hardware security check has been improved a lot after 911. However, how to increase the software security is the key for hospitality industry. How can we ask some sensitive questions or find some information through observation are the key for the comfortable travel environment. However, except some western countries, asking people's religion is acceptable and reasonable. Though globalization, hospitality industry should come out more approaches for making sure the security.    

With both individual sites like American Airlines or bundle sites like Travelocity; everyone is jumping on the eCommerce train. And what better way to grow customer loyalty than with your very own app. Want to buy a plane ticket or rent a hotel room do it from your smart phone. Problem is how do you get people to down load your app. Well Facebook has figured that out for you. Advertise on their site and customers can install your app with a click of a button. No jumping to other websites and hassling with tricky downloads; just click and your off.

"When you go to SignUpGenius.com, you'll find services catering to the needs of eight different groups. There are schools, looking for help with organizing parent-teacher conferences, class volunteers, and events such as book fairs. Churches and temples can get help with scheduling nursery workers and greeters. Nonprofits can organize donations and fundraisers. Other groups are clubs and groups, sports, business, family and college. The idea is to attract a range of users, from parents organizing car pools to businesses coordinating employee training schedules. "By going broad, we still haven't scratched the surface," said Angel Rutledge, who is married to Dan and is the chief marketing officer. SignUpGenius' users are 78 percent female, and 80 percent are between the ages of 25 and 54. "Our primary user is a mom with kids," says marketing strategist Kate White. "Most people tend to find us through their kids' activities." Monthly fees range from free to $49.99, where users can get additional features such as cloud file storage and access by multiple administrators. These subscription services were significant, Dan Rutledge says, "because we jumped into the organizational level, from coach to league, from teacher to school." While the Rutledges don't disclose specific financial information of the private company, other numbers illustrate its growth. Revenue in August 2015 increased 225 percent over August 2014, according to the company. Between 120,000 and 190,000 events are organized per month, with a groundswell in August and September, when the school year begins. In 2014, SignUpGenius says 1.4 million new sign-up pages were created. Traffic rose 35 percent last year, to 39.9 million visitors. And the company has grown from 13 employees this spring, to 20 now." This article illustrates the idea of on the event planning and I.T. programs working handing in handing. As an example, the article uses the company SignUpGenius wh

Global distribution systems have thought to eventually become extinct but the growth of new technologies has given GDS new hope. The three main companies that control this market are Amadeus, Sabre, and Travelport. Each of the companies has expanded their market penetration via their subsidiaries that are currently operating with global distribution systems. In 2014 Amadeus brought in almost $1billion in revenue. In addition, Sabre and Travelport showed positive growth. Airlines on the other hand, would prefer to directly have travelers book with them to save on fees. At the same time GDS brings attractive promotions to customers making them useful to the airlines and their revenue. GDS has stimulated the growth of online websites like, Expedia, Kayak, Orbitz, Priceline). Where potential customers find competitive rates and can book more than just a plane ticket.

November 19th 2009, Planes at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International airport in Atlanta, Georgia experienced numerous of delays. Airlines were cancelling and delaying flights all over the United States, due to problems with the airline system. The system that collects airlines flight plans was experiencing technical difficulty. During the time of the problem, safety in the air wasn't the issue; planes were still flying. Various airlines resorted back to manually processing flight plan. The biggest issue that the airport, and other airlines faced during this time; was the fact that so many flights were being delayed. I can only imagine the agony to plan and arrange flights manually. One of the most important factor, is that everyone safety wasn't threatened by the system problems.

Would you pick your seat based on an app for your next plane ride? Well on KLM you can and Virgin is working on one too. Personally I use that time to relax but if I could use it to avoid an avid stamp collecting chatter box it would be worth it. There may be a small fee and possible sell of personal information to marketers but on a long haul flight sitting next to a like-minded individual might make all the difference in a good vs awkward ride. Very neat! Unfortunately, the fun and celebrations of the Christmas season are often dampened by the stressful experience of holiday air travel. ...

I feel that an app that uses information from social media may be too personal for most. However I do see an opportunity from this idea. Airlines may consider adding an option for their passengers to select if they are travelling for business or pleasure. They could assign seat depending on the purpose of the passengers trip.

To tell the truth, I will try it if it is free to choose people around you. But on the other hand, I think it is hard to implement this system.....

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 how technology affects world tourism. Technology plays a major role in tourism and travel and can help to reduce labor costs and bad customer service. On the other hand, because our industry is driven by human interaction too much or misuse of technology can truly hinder service. The article also stated that "technology's growth has allowed worldwide terrorism to to attack the tourism industry". Cell phones can be used to blow up bombs, air conditions, and destroy planes. As leaders in the industry we must decide how far to go with the use technology.

This article summarizes why we wont be seeing a decline of GDS use in the travel industry anytime soon. As stated in the article "nothing beats a GDS model for booking seats on planes". The article suggests that a good GDS agent can ultimately work more efficiently than someone working with a GUI. Another major positive to using GDS is accessibility. A firm can book both corporate and leisure travel from anywhere, as long as internet access is available. In one study 62% of agents said that air content was the biggest draw of a GDS. One agent said that when booking air the GDS system Amadeus gives her a selection of choices in a fraction of the time it takes her clients to see them online. Clearly, GDS systems such as Amadeus and Sabre are saving agents and customers time and money while booking. Another upside to using GDS is that it allows agents to see routes, departures and arrival times which are important because many clients have preferable airports when they travel. The article also says how GDS is more commonly used for air and car rentals instead of hotels. It also gives a look into why Airlines werent a fan of GDS usage. For example, GDS were changing revenue models for airlines because GDSs paid travel agents and it seemed that they were buying loyalty with money from airline fees.

MIS is becoming an important part of any organization, helping collect and analyse data that is relevant to business will facilitate planing and decision making.

In the future, jobs will look different, allowing more and more people to work as digital nomads from anywhere in the world, including onboard planes thanks to the high-speed in-flight Internet. They will want to have a platform to be able to book any kind of transport, be it air, ground or sea on an on-demand basis. And this is exactly what kiwi.com is building with the Virtual Global Supercarrier.

The first products distributed by GDS was hotel lodging reservation system, such as different types of rooms, description and price categories with the airline system. GDS has been increased on the travel market, such as number of flights. Travel Agencies (TA) also use GDS to offer complimentary products, such as car rental, hotel and other related forms of accommodation, bus tickets, vacation tickets, yacht rides and even flowers and champagne,That means, GDS has become more important distribution channel for nay product through TA. Also TA had more opportunity of more products their own system and GDS system from increase number of booking volume with lower operating costs. It was the first and major goals of GDS being used in the hospitality industry. Even though hopitality ingustry use GDS system, there are few problems, such as show only simple structure. For example, there are 4 different kinds od room and 3 categories od comfort, it means they have 12 different kinds of combination. Because of the GDS database structure, only there 12 combination could be displayed. It took a while to fit all the multiple types of comport rates, rooms and services in GDS standard database structure. Instead of choosing GDS system, they cans choose other alternative system with develop several computerized system to make a database structure closer to product specification. Nowadays, GDS using all of the hospitality industry from reservation hotel rooms to car rentals and Travel Agencies. Through GDS as globally, people are able to to book different kinds of hotel rooms in different destination all around the world, tours, airline seats, cruises and eeve limousines.

Looking at these numbers it becomes very clear how important GDS are to the hospitality industry, more rooms booked means increased revenues and more jobs for hospitality professionals. I am sure that this technology will evolve and transform so it is important to stay current and understand how to get the most out of it.

What's global distribution system? This question is kind of cliché in our group, but this article gives a very good introduction about GDS and it's quite easy to understand comparing to many other articles introducing GDS. This article tells us: How GDS develops from being used only in airline industry to being generally adopted in hospitality industry; What is the working idea behind the GDS; Four major GDS including Amadeus, Galileo, Sabre and Worldspan; Advantages provided by GDS.

Ok so this article is lengthy but comprehensive. And the general consensus is the GDSs are never going away. They will likely change with new technologies, but they won't be replaced completely by something new. Heck, even though air travel is dominant among travel options, we still have trains, right? Overall this article takes the reader through the birth of the GDSs, their evolution to today and thoughts about what to expect in the future. One part of the article of particular interest is the talk about New Distribution Capability for airlines that uses XML coding language to allow airlines to sell ancillary products like seat upgrades. This layers directly into revenue increases through revenue management of seats on flights. There are already price differences between cabin classes. But instead of all seats being one price in the main cabin, seats closer to the front of the plane could be sold for a slight premium. There could be a different fare for window or aisle or exit row. There are 3 levels of this certification for an airline and although some airlines like American Airlines has been certified as level 3, full capability, most airlines have not gone beyond level 1. None of the GDS companies offer level 3 for New Distribution Capability which means you need to go a company's site directly to be able to purchase the specific desired attributes of your seat. By not having that capability, the GDSs disadvantage themselves as a distribution channel.

This article discusses the new trend of booking entire planes for private events in order to increase comfort and ease of travel for the attendees of the specific event. In the article, the author discusses a specific company called Freespeed that plans the entirety of the trip from the plane and pilot to meal and beverages been offered. This allows for complete customization of the air transportation experience.