GDS, OTA and Meta: What's the difference? | HotelMinder - 2 views
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GDS, OTA and Meta: What’s the difference?
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ansonj55 on 28 Jan 19The article covers the topics discussed in this week's topics related to Global Distribution Systems (GDS) and Online Travel Agency (OTA). It goes in detail regarding the difference and benefits of each. The landscape of the traveling industry changed in the late 1900s with the introduction of the GDS from the airline industry. Although costly, hotels are able to provide unsold rooms at a cheaper rate in order to secure bookings. Similarly, OTAs have gained popularity with the rise of use and reliance of the internet. Most beneficial of a OTA is more visibility for the hotel, since they invest a significant amount of capital in advertising. Whether a hotel is deciding whether or not to invest in a GDS or OTA, it is important to do a cost benefit analysis in order to determine which may be more beneficial to the property.
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GDS is a rather costly selling channel that mainly allows the sale of rooms in larger quantities to bigger companies (for corporate guests) or travel agencies (leisure travellers). Thus, small independent hotels usually do not need GDS.
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With the rise of the internet, many websites began selling rooms without the need for human interaction. These sites very quickly gained important market share,
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Rather than trying to compete with them, it would be better to see them as another selling distribution channel instead.
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Travel agencies use GDS to get real-time availability, and preferred rates on flight tickets, hotel rooms and car rentals all over the world as it allows them to be very reactive when asked for a quote.
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They were first created by airline companies during the 1950’s to broaden hotel and car rental businesses by enabling automated transactions between travel service providers and travel agencies (traditional and online).
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Central Reservation Services (CRS), such as Sabre, allow hotels to sell their rooms to all GDS simultaneously. However, it is up to the hotel whether to connect with only one or two GDS directly, without the need for a CRS. The good news is that some channel managers are also able to connect with GDS systems.
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The most popular example is Booking.com, although Expedia (for corporate guests) and Hostelworld (for more economical accommodation options) are also well-known.
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Your hotel can usually be listed on an OTA free of charge by adding your hotel photos, descriptions, rooms, rates, etc. You can then choose how many rooms you’d like to sell through the OTA. The availability you’d like to sell as well as the room rate is your decision, and although appearing on the OTA is free, you will have to pay a commission of approximately 15% to 20% every time you get a booking.
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Although they produce rather time-consuming work as you need to log into each of their extranets to update daily availability and rates, you can very easily connect an OTA to a channel manager to automate, or at least greatly facilitate these tasks.
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They were created shortly after OTAs and display the current rates of many different hotels in a given destination.
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Today, OTA’s are a must, and although metasearch engines are slightly more technical to manage, they can also be an attractive selling channel to consider.
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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.