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The article explains the history of GDS, and how GDS doesn't hold any inventory, but they are held on the vendor's reservation system so if a travel agent approaches Air India for reservation, the GDS can route the travel agent to Air India's computer reservation system in real time. Of course any travel agency should invest in the GDS as GDS can provide the best holiday package to guests at the lowest rate, for a package which includes air, hotel, and car rental. The article also illustrates how important GDS was to the airline industry and how the booking process has changed in the past decade, as we can now book within minutes in the comfort of our home. Before it would take an employee over an hour just to book a single flight for a customer.

The role of travel agents has changed drastically over the last 30 years. When once you needed a travel agent to do all of your bookings for you, you now have access to all of these tools and can create your own travel experience. Therefore, today's travel agent needs to be tech savvy and must keep up with the trends and provide their clients with the most up to date travel information. They also must have an online presence, specifically social media that shows their "personality" and helps with marketing. As long as agents can keep up with the ever changing technologies, clients will go to agents for the "human touch" and real first hand experience.

Beginning in 2018 the financial accounting standards for hotel business are changing. One of the changes is the way OTAs charge for the rooms. Typically the OTAs operate under two methods the retail model and merchant model. The retail model uses the OTA to reserve the room but the final payment is made to the hotel. The hotel then gives a commission back to the OTA. Under The merchant model the payment is made to the OTA. Then the OTA takes the commission off and sends the remaining payment to the hotel for the price of the room. This comes out as a net transaction. The new standard is saying that the company that controls the transaction for the room has to mark the transaction or sale as a gross transaction. The new model forces the hotels to record the transaction on a gross basis. This can be a big difference for hotels because now they will have to increase the amount of costs and reduce the hotels bottom line.

This article mentions 3 key signs on when you should consider upgrading to a full event management software. I found this article to be relevant as this weeks discussion post was about the pros and cons for event registration systems. The 3 signs mentioned in the article are; "1. You need more complex event marketing, 2. Your event planning process is overwhelming, 3. Your events have grown big enough to require housing and travel management." After reading the first sign, I believe that now a days event planners need to have a full event management software if they are going to do a big event. The article stated that full services have social promotion tools, email marketing, and the ability to create an event within an event. These are all such important parts of an event. You have to have someone to send out email reminders and you might have an event that is more like a huge production where you have events within and event. And there's so many events that could fit in your head before you forget something. The other sign which I found very important was the third one. If your event requires traveling or housing then you are definitely going to be overwhelmed and you are going to need the extra help, event if its to track someones flight details.

Air Canada's new platform, NDC Exchange, which works outside of the GDSes, allows the airline to manage the way its bookings appear on travel agency registration systems. The system was created by ATPCO (Airline Tariff Publishing Co.) and SITA, the latter of which transforms the data while the former provides the data services that make it have the ability to run,. Recently, several GDSes, such as Sabre, Amadeus, along with other entities like Verteil Technologies, Serko, and more, have also began to utilize their own NDC Exchange program.

The cloud will provide the digital infrastructure for the cities of tomorrow, where an estimated 6 billion of the world's population will live by 2045. A commercial aviation cloud will help airlines. A utilities cloud will automatically repair faults in the power grid to ensure a smooth supply of power to homes and businesses. A banking cloud will scan thousands of transactions per second to prevent fraud. The cloud will help society cope with growing volumes of data. High definition video will account for 89% of individual user traffic by 2025, of which image and video content will be for non-entertainment purposes. The cloud will support the emerging artificial intelligence technologies which will be adapted to mobile use, notably the cell phones which overlook PC sales in 2011. Although driverless cars are still a ways off, it will be realized soon, thanks to the power of the cloud.

The article reports the state of Hawaii's hospitality and tourism industry is beginning to become more aware of how going green initiatives will effect the economy in a positive way. A management member of a consulting firm stated the efforts the hospitality and tourism industry need to be known to the community, guest and the staff of the hotels. He feels the research, figures and strategies need to be posted so everyone understands their role in the advancement of the states main industry's desire to become more sustainable. Hawaiian Airlines along with various hotels are reducing waste and sourcing more local items with in their outlets.

GDSs are updating their systems to meet the growing demands of travel agents and still are popular today. They are a complicated system that require months of usage and training to become proficient. There can be mistakes when using GDSs that most travel agents try to avoid making because a mistake could lead to a debit memo r fine. The good news is unless you are booking corporate travel, complicated itineraries, or air only travel, you do not need to use GDS. Most leisure travel agents can use a host agent. These systems are like the point and click booking that are used by online travel agencies. GDSs have their place and are beneficial for certain types of agents; however, most agents that do not want to take months to learn to use GDSs have alternatives.

This article contains an interview with the CEO of the payments technology company Affirm, Max Levchin. Affirm, established in 2012, is a payment technology firm that allows for travelers to pay for trips via a monthly payment plan. The company fully pays the travel provider and then is responsible for collecting the funds from the traveler. The payment does not need to be paid in full prior to travel. Levchin says that this product is attractive to companies because airline and hotels don't have to worry about interchange, processing fees and fraud. It benefits consumers because they are able to book early when prices are lower instead of "saving up" to book closer to the date of travel, when the trip is more expensive. They have seen an increase in advance bookings with Affirm for trips over $250. He suggests that this will disrupt traditional travel industry e-commerce and make travel more accessible.

The following article gives and inside look to the importance of Global Distribution Systems and how they're important for the success of hotel firms. The systems works as a tool to reach customers easily and gives the information needed to allow travel agents to access the best prices provided. Although the hotel industry would prefer for their customers to book directly through their website so that they do not have to pay the fees associated with Online Travel Agencies - GDS is still a beneficial platform to gain attention and promote their business. Once they have returning/loyal guests, this is when the hotel industry strives to encourage them to book directly to their site to increase overall revenue.

This article highlights the benefits of GDS and how it is becoming obsolete to major airlines. Experts in the industry have been suggesting that the days of the GDS are numbered as technology evolves.

As technology advances so does the way consumers buy products and services. In order to keep consumers happy the hospitality industry has adapted itself to be more mobile and convenient. Mobility and convenience are two very important factors when making a website or app for E-Commerce. Many hotels and restaurants have created apps for cell phones and tablets so that guest can have convenience and mobility when booking a reservation or ordering a meal. E-Commerce profitability is maximized by using digital marketing. Two major sources for digital marketing are search engines and social media ads. Through digital marketing companies can constantly advertise to consumers anywhere at anytime in a cost efficient manor. Search engine marketing allows companies to increase the number of visitors to their website by putting them at the top of search engine results.

To summarize this article, it mainly discussed how the layout of digital marketing within the hospitality industry is constantly changing and highly important. This is something that is a challenging task for most hospitality businesses, especially hotels. It was said that there are many factors/questions to consider when approaching digital marketing such as " How much does it cost to acquire a new guest and how do we encourage this new guest to book directly through a brand's website?" Websites are plays a vital role in digital marketing are one of the main starting points. Hotels and other hospitality businesses should be frequently updating websites with useful information that compliments more visuals such as images and videos. In addition to that, it was even mentioned how making sure that the website is easy to navigate and readily accessible to customers is essential. After carefully reading more into article, SEM (Search Engine Marketing) was mentioned. This is more like an assessment in a way and a method to show where a hotel or business stands as a brand. For example, if your were to simply google the word hotel, brands such as Marriott and Hilton would most likely be at the top of the list. That is actually good and will benefit those brands greatly in the aspect that there reputation, which possibly stems from online review sites and social media platforms, is well known. These online review sites are capable of monitoring and responding to customer inquiries/comments. The article also touched basis on how the demand of social media presence is vital and should not be overlooked. Social media proves to be cost effective and efficient. Simply using hashtags with either the brand name or keywords can attract prospective customers which in return will generate more revenue. Overall, the article was clear that as far as the hospitality industry goes, digital marketing is something that has evolved in so many ways and can generate good revenue if the plan

Digital marketers in the hotel industry are adapting to the changing climate for OTA's guest expectations, advertising, and competition. Hotel Websites must be clean, low text, and image based with opportunities for guest to comment or ask questions. How to guests find you online? How can we create strategic links from the website to a brand's social channels for increased retention? Business owners will need to learn search engine marketing (SEM) to ensure that sites appear high on listed results of search engines. Paid advertising and Geo-targeting advertisement will be essential in offering the right products to the right markets. Markets must set measurement goals to monitor performance at different stages of ad campaigns and decided if ads should be adjusted. Lastly, the social media craze is still going strong, and being aware of current trend such as Instagram and hashtaging will be crucial in for current success.

One of the reasons why I felt this article was very insteresting is tha I have use "despegar before and I have also not used or decided not to use this travel agency because of the "not friendly" sfoftware or technology they had on their website. As a customer I feel this would give an amazing positive revenue to the company. This articles texplain how this GDS software called SABRE has sign a contract of extension with Despegar.com

This article explains the benefits of Global distributions channels in the hotel industry, The benefits listed are strong continuous annual growth, more corporate bookings, worldwide exposure. and significant revenue stream for any hotel. The most significant point was the topic of an increase in corporate bookings. Large companies use GDS to track their employees travel expenses. This is efficient because companies are able to use this system to manage costs and expenses of travel. Although some hoteliers may say this "dying", it appears GDS is still generating business and revenue for many companies.

This article demonstrates the significance of GDS in cutting cut the operation costs in the airline industry, and thus, improves profitability. The article explains that Air India solved its financial problems by implementing GDS. The use of GDS in domestic ticketing helped the company to reduce its expenditure and earn more revenue. Thus, this is an effective method that modern airlines can use to increase their profit margins.

This article introduces GDS, OTA and Meta in a short space. GDS stands for Global Distribution System, GDS is a rather costly selling channel that mainly allows the sale of rooms in larger quantities to bigger companies. Small independent hotels usually do not need GDS. OTA stands for Online Travel Agency. meta stands for Metasearch Engines. For small hotels, the cost of GDS is high and it is generally difficult to adopt. OTA and meta are two methods worth considering.

The leader in the airline industry, Emirates airlines is collaborating with Sabre Corporation Technology to provide better services for it's customers, as well as receiving more in revenue. Studies have shown that customers enjoy customizing their travel plans and by working with this new type of technology partnership, the software is being developed that will allow the customers to customize every aspect of their trip. They can filter based upon price, miles earned, and date/time while then adding on any other options, but rather through just one airline, this software allows guests to choose from all airlines within the Emirates family. I think this type of investment technology is the future, because the airline industry has already changed the way we purchase airline tickets, by no longer including seat selection, checked baggage, and now even carry-on baggage. Instead of trying to make the customers feel like the airlines are charging for every littl thing (which they are), this type of technology can let guests feel like they are truly creating their own trip.