Guest Column: How Distribution Systems Are Like Seat Belts - Business Travel News - 0 views
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staying hotels trends american initiatives industry sustainability Green guest column distribution systems seat news travel business travel belts
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global distribution systems use old technology
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Are not designed to manage high transaction volumes generated by large TMCs.Do not offer comparison shopping on competing airlines.
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Building out airline websites, keeping website content updated, investing in agent portals and investing in direct connect technology all come with significant capital expenditures or resource costs.
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My article this week is about how GDS (Global Distribution Systems) can be compared to a seatbelt. The author opens the article discussing the main reasons we still continue to use seatbelts; even though they aren't the most comfortable or fashionable items to use, they still do their jobs in saving our lives when it comes to a collision of some sort. The author is in favor of GDS and makes the claim that like seatbelts, the GDS may not be the most up-to-date or may not appear to be as nice as other local systems to each individual airline, but they get the job done and there are no other systems out there like it that we know of (no other systems that do everything he GDS system does that is). The main topic of discussion that the article is concerned with is the recent decision made by the company Lufthansa to start charging its customers an additional surcharge for using GDS systems instead of going through its own system. The author clearly makes it know that she doesn't believe Lufthansa when they say they are charging this additional surcharge because GDS is the most expensive channel to go through. "Because there's no reason to think that an airline should expect to distribute its products without any cost, Lufthansa's recent gambit seems more of a tactic for increasing lagging direct distribution... Its strategy seems to rest in shifting distribution costs to corporate buyers" claims Rose, the author of the article. The author also points out some of the draw backs of using agency portals, the main reason being that a customer cannot compare rates of other competitors and that agency portals cannot handle high volume transactions like the GDS can. It is also made known that there are costs that come with other channels as well, like the prices you pay for building airline websites and keeping them updated. The author concludes that "Given the history of negotiations between airlines and GDSs, it's impossible to know whether Lufthansa is using DCC as