GDS though spend $Ms in development to support 100Ks traditional agents and Online Travel agents M’s of web consumers. They have to comply with EU and US regulations to provide neutral air displays (hotels and cars don’t fall under this) and a now being required to provision correct lowest priced bookable services to support shopping entries. Rail and air are now being shown together in Europe on GDS primary displays. Try LON/PAR (City pairs) in Galileo instead of LHR/CDG (Airport pairs)and you will see all 9F Eurostar ticketable services including bookable seats – couch 9 seat 34B etc.
The platform is in place if suppliers choose to start interlining with traditional competitng services for example out air back rail on one fare and one E ticket..at the moment these are mainly separate tickets so lossing the traveller option of cheaper round trip fares. These capabilities are avalible via GDSs because they invest in their core business – hi volume transaction realtime bookable content aggregation. Guaranteed bookings for 700+ airlines, 84K hotels, 30+ car companies, LCC content….all in one place – what could be better. As Murray says if you know your stuff – you’ll know competing with the GDSs is not as easy as saying you’re a GDS.

Are these start ups identifying themselves with a business model or the value (as in cash generative capabilities) of these companies ?

That said, (though it may sound a bit Orwellian) good agents are getting hard to find – many of the younger breed were simply not brought up using old fashioned methods, so lack (with all due respect) the ability to use their instinct to know when something does not look or feel right – and that can mean buying a ticket for £1,800 rather than £498 (one example of how much I saved on one ticket alone simply by NOT following the airline website’s suggestion.)

Coined the phrase “social GDS” I don’t think its been coined at all. It may be something some marketing type thought up under some misguided intention to try and fool – who – agents? Nope, perhaps the public, I don’t know; but it hasn’t worked and it really is very, very silly. Not clever at all.

The internet will answer your question. But, are you asking the right question??

Indeed, since the late 80′s (or whenever it was the thing was invented)hardly anything has changed – mainly because it does not need to. It shows connections (across airlines) and (most importantly) does the fare construction for you. Many agents (like me) are system loyal. Personally, I am a loyal Sabre man – until the boss foisted ruddy Amadeus on me). Personally (and I do stress a personal opinion) I find Amadeus time consuming and unwieldy. I like Galileo yet found Worldspan a ruddy nightmare – but as I say that is very much a personal thing and there are as many agents who will have different points of view. I don’t mind (!) if the GDS systems want to produce XML feeds, horse feeds or any other bits and bobs as long as the GDS core remains.

I have looked at the these social GDS’s and wouldn’t give them house room. They are not a GDS in any sense of the word!.

There is a bit of a tendency to favour odd bits here and there. Sometimes on has to gve Amadeus a sharp slap to get it to do what you want it to do and I very often “cheat” that is, check an odd routing on expedia if not happy with the answers I am getting – so it is pointless really, for a GDS to try and pull the wool over an agents eye. AND there’s the nub – it is all very well having any sort of system or feed or app or other toy – at the end of the day, only an agent worth his or her salt can tell if the information being given is correct or garbage. Like the mechanic, the book may say “turn nut A” – but he may know that that is just not right. A lot of saving money in travel is instinctively knowing how to go about something, what “feels” right, what is clearly rubbish (and believe me, there are some very well known travel websites that produce some stunning rubbish). Not to mention the – Ahem! – work arounds. There are other “essential tools” for an agent (or should I say, “I” find essential) one is Google Earth and the other, the website wegolo – which is an excellent aggregator of all the odds and sods low cost airlines.

As I say, I am no techy type. Oh! And my screen is not green. We do have blue ones, now, you know. (or grey…)

Lots of companies use the term GDS for their new products but lots of content in lots of different new ‘GDS’ buckets does not equal aggregated content, or ease of search.

Forrester put out a survey earlier this year indicating a very high level of discontent with online travel shopping. Calling a product a ‘GDS’ but offering only niche or limited content seems like a sure-fire way to annoy travel sellers and travel buyers.

I’d add that the ‘Global’ part should support display, currency and availability by ‘point of sale’ (from a product perspective Tourabout supports 8 of the 10 points raised.)

On the ‘Social GDS’, given the lack of precedent, in some respects we planted our tongues firmly in cheek when we coined that phrase. But we wanted to define the concept of social distribution in a similar way.

Its the idea that Travel companies can create ‘social assets’ and have them distributed to many locations to be consumed.

It’s distribution and its global…maybe we’re burning a sacred cow

(1) Global & Comprehensive

(2) Ability to transact with suppliers through a standardized API (ideally XML)

If these two factors are present, then you have in my opinion what constitutes a GDS. To me XML is plumbing that provides an easier conduit for connecting.

My analogy is this:

GDS = AOL/Compuserve
XML = Web 2.0

Surely number of segments directly correlates to system load? Value pricer certainly does (as that requires many price combination checks which is a high load intensive calculation)

I was really setting out theoretical business requirements for a GDS rather than describing how any individual company currently operates!

Cheers. Alex

There are other mini-GDSs that do not in fact charge the suppliers anything but take their revenue from the intermediary that is using their feed. These newer GDSs (such as CarTrawler) allow zero cost distribution in that case.

Imagine if Google were a GDS…

This post was mentioned on Twitter by kevinlukemay: Is @alexbainbridge right? Ten factors to define a Global Distribution System [GDS] | Tnooz http://bit.ly/5Outf3...

I meen, they need to deal with European commission for no competitive exclusive advantage and things like that. I guess in US it could be the same.

And they spend lot of money in lobbying and other communication stuff to explain their positions.

Small tourism operator are under the radar of this stuff

Best

Claude

Historically agents used to access GDS system via a command line – or via software that re-presented the GDS data as it comes out of the GDS. Now agents (and consumers) are much more likely to use software / services that have an additional logic layer between user and GDS data – hence the actual data order returned by GDS is less significant than previously it once was. (filtering is important, order less so)

@Bonnie – A tricky one if the GDS is to get involved in ensuring compliance from both sides of the marketplace. Ummm….

The current GDS’ can, and do, bias display of supply on their screens, through ads or paid placement, very similar to sponsored searches on Google.

There will always be suppliers who are willing to pay to get their product noticed, so I think any future GDS-like entity will offer the same functionality. Why wouldn’t they, especially if suppliers are willing to pay?