It wasn’t long ago that various pundits were proclaiming the death of the dinosaur Global Distribution Systems (GDS) and declaring that the Internet would replace us all. But for all the success of travel “supplier.com” sites – and they have had some considerable impact on GDS volumes – consumers have demonstrated that they still want choice.
I don’t mean to suggest that there isn’t room for improvement in the GDS model, particularly in how we provide and present content to travel agents, corporate travel managers and other users and I’ll address some of these improvements in upcoming blogs.
Most consumers do not consider that they will receive an unbiased selection of all the travel options available when they go to a web site which is branded to a particular supplier. And they would be right. There was a tendency some time ago for consumers to believe that the only place they would see a travel supplier’s lowest price was on the branded web site of that supplier. However, through what are known as “full content deals”, the GDS industry has largely contracted with the vast majority of airlines and indeed hotel chains to ensure that all publicly available fares, seats or rooms are shown through the channels using the GDS. These channels include all of the major Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) as well as the high street leisure agencies and business travel management companies.
The recent decision in the USA of all the major OTAs to largely remove the booking fees they once charged to consumers now means that there is no need whatsoever for a consumer to shop for choice of carrier and itinerary at an OTA and then go to the supplier.com web site to book the same price or itinerary in order to save the OTA booking fee. Similarly in the business travel world, the desire of low cost carriers to capture more corporate business has resulted in increasing numbers and “big names” such as EasyJet in Europe and Southwest and JetBlue in the USA embracing participation in the GDS because the GDSs are the main content aggregation, singular booking process, on-line booking tool and travel workflow automation providers to both corporate and leisure travel providers.
Travel meta search companies, which screen scrape the web sites of assorted travel providers to provide on-line consumers with travel options, generally offer a more limited range of options to that of sites powered by GDSs. It is for this reason that several meta search sites have actually entered into agreements with Travelport and pay for access to and use of our data in response to consumer queries on fares and seat availability. Furthermore, the majority of bookings which emanate from travel meta search go to Online Travel Agencies which are of course largely reliant on the GDSs for their aggregated content, fares and booking capabilities.
It is maybe not the most glamorous thing in the world to be the plumbing behind the global travel industry but for that part of the consumer led market which demands choice and wants to be able to see and access consistent travel content through multiple channels – on-line, off-line, mobile, policy managed, non managed – then this is the role the GDSs play.
Such “plumbing” requires infrastructure and investment – in the case of Travelport a state of the art data centre complex which processes more than 31 billion transactions per month and handles 65 million travel searches per day. A fares database which holds over 4 billion prices and an almost infinite range of price combinations enabling consumers ultimately to get a price to journey from and to virtually any point on the planet which has a commercial air service and to stay in any one of over 92,000 hotel properties along the way.
The challenge for GDS providers – just as it is for virtually every other business – is to stay relevant in a rapidly changing world. This means processing and presenting data in different ways, adding the ability to pay for a seat assignment, a checked bag or a spa treatement at the hotel as well reserve the room as we continue to evolve to meet the changing needs and expectations of our customers and suppliers. This requires investment in applications and infrastructure.
However, the goal at Travelport remains the same: to enable our customers and suppliers to provide informed travel choice on a global platform.
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