Global Distribution System (GDS) In Travel Industry

Overview of Major GDS Providers

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GDS, commonly known as Global Distribution System is basically a system of computerized network that is operated and owned by companies, who are capable of establishing transaction in between the service providers of travel industries. The travel industries that use Global Distribution System are the airlines, car rental agencies, hotels, and the travel agencies (Taneja, 2017). GDS uses real-time inventory for getting the actual number of rooms that are available presently, and the real number of cars that is presently available with the service providers. The travel agencies support the GDS system so that they can provision the services that are related to traveling to their customers. GDS is a computer network as well as a reservation tool that is needed for the hotel inventory and rates for the travel agents. The GDS helps all the agents to make online booking. GDS also known as Automatic Reservation System or as Computerized Reservation System (CRS) that helps various travelling segments as well as serves different companies such as hotels, airports, airlines, railways, cruise lines, and companies of car rental.

Galileo is identified as an international global technology leader that is diversified. The main business of Galileo GDS is to provide global distribution electronically for travel industries by computerized automatic reservation system, that leads to innovative solutions based on internet and products that are leading edge. The technology of Galileo is a very innovative technology (Law et al., 2015). With the increase of more demand of web-based travel, Galileo has established new relationships withal the tools in internet and all the services that are related to the corporate world. Galileo is known as value added distributor of the travel inventory that is dedicated to the supporting travel agency and the corporate customer by expanding the choice of the traveler.

Amadues was founded in the year 1987 by Iberia, SAS, Lufthansa and Air France, is the youngest companies of all four companies that serves GDS. This is the leading GDS system as well as technology provider that serves the sales, distribution needs, and sales that are related to world tourism and travel industries (Shaw, 2016). The comprehensive database and network data of Amadues is one of the largest company in Europe that serves more than 87,000 locations of travel agencies and serves almost 12,500 sales offices of airlines in about 250 markets globally. The system provides access to about 80,000 hotels and about 60 car agency companies that serves about 54,000 locations as well as other groups that provide rail, cruise, tour operators, and insurance companies.

Advantages and Disadvantages of GDS for Online Ticket Booking

For almost 40 years, there are many innovations that are developed by the Sabre and then transforming the their business to travel. For Sabre reservation system that was established in the year 1960, the company implemented management system in the year 1980. Sabre also leads to websites of travelling today around world and has implemented all the travel industries (Gillespie & Riddle, 2015). In the year 1996, Sabre became the parent company of AMR with legal entity that is followed initializing public offering successfully. The Sabre company represented almost 45 countries with a leading provider of reservation technology for travelling industries as well as provides many innovative products that enables travelling services and commerce. Sabre also enhances operations for airlines. Sabre has an online traveling website known as Trevelocity.com. Sabre is also a provider of travel procurement that is web based that includes purchasing of airplanes, cars, and hotels and also provides services such as planning and meeting.

Worldspan was founded in the year 1990 on 7^th Feb that was originally possessed by Delta Airlines Inc., American Airlines Inc., and Northwest Airlines. By the tear 1995, the internet technology was greatly advanced by the travel industry (Wensveen et al., 2018). By then, Worlspan has developed all the strategies of travelling, services that were needed and the solutions to ensure the long-term success of the company. Electronic distribution for informstion on trvelling, internet products, and the connectivity are all provided by the Worldspan. The Worldspan also provided  e-commerce capabilities for providers of travel services and the corporations involved.

The Worldspan was considered as a legacy of not well known industries. In the year 2001, LLC was launched on Internet with the help of Worldspan as its engine for internet booking (Belobaba, Odoni & Barnhart, 2015). In the year 2002, Worldspan was the first company to introduce a multi-server technology based company in a revolutionary way that offers an unprecedented selection of all pricing options to their customers.

The airline uses the system the Global Distribution system for booking of tickets online. The bookings of airline tickets are to be based on internet. The airline system uses the GDS system for finding the real time booking status for all the tickets that are booked. The airline online booking also helps their customers to know about cost of their tickets and ensures lowest cost of tickets.

Global Distribution System in a hotel industry help to increase the revenue of the business. The revenue increase tremendously because of GDS that involves information of hotels, availability of rooms, rates for the rooms, and location of the hotel (Forister et al., 2015). GDS helps to maximize the bookings of the hotels and reach the travelling markets more easily. GDS reduces the cost of booking a hotel and the managers of hotel can uncover a new market for promoting their products in the market.

Benefits of GDS for Car Rental Services

The GDS network helps the travel company, agents, as well as their customers to access all the rates of reservation, inventories, and scheduling at lowest price. The GDS system also helps the customers to book tickets online that helps the customers to book online tickets.

Many products are used by the GDS system that are very efficient to the market. One of such product is the car rental service (Limmathurotsakul et al., 2016). cars can be booked as rentals that is very easy to use in real time interface. The Global Distribution System helps the customer to work efficiently and effectively to increase the bookings of the car for both personal as well as official work around the world.

There are many characteristics of Galileo. The characteristics are as follows:

• Maximum number of buyers can be reached with the help of Galileo GDS.
• Increase the revenues.
• Increase the efficiency.
• Lowers the operating cost.
• Increase productivity.
• Expands the customer’s channels of choice.
• Point of scale increased (Kraemer et al., 2015).
• Galileo customizes innovative solutions.
• New marketing opportunities are being captured by Galileo.
• Allows real time inventory and the contents of the system.

The Galileo GDS generally provides booking tools and content to fulfill the demand of the travel professionals.

E-Ticketing is commonly known as electronic ticketing is a digital ticket that can be purchased online and is equivalent to a paper ticket. E-ticket is mostly associated with the tickets of airline (Kotabe & Helsen, 2015). There are electronic tickets for rail transport that are usually known as transit pass or travel card. The electronic ticketing system is considered to be a more efficient way of purchasing ticket, processing the ticket and marketing for industries of railways, airlines and other entertainment industries.

When a reservation is being completed online, the airline company keeps a record of the ticket that is purchased in its reservation system. Customers can get a print out copy of the ticket after the e-ticket is generated. The main advantage of e-ticket is that it provides airline tickets at lowest price available and the customer can get many copies of the electronic ticket receipt. The e-ticket shows all the details of terms and conditions for travelling showing the form of payment, and the baggage allowance that a particular airline allows.

Advantages:

1. There are many advantages that an airline system provides. The airline system provides tickets at a cheaper rate (Messina et al., 2015).
2. As the ticket is online, there is no chance of losing the ticket. The booking details is kept on the computer system of airline company.
3. The processing of time can be reduced by electronic ticketing as it avoids visiting the ticket counter and keeps record all the details of the passenger.

Disadvantages:

1. After all the whole process depend son system and Internet. If the system crashes or there is in interruption at the time of payment, the customer can lose information from the web or from the system (Liu & Zipser, 2015).
2. There is a fear of change in electronic ticket system.
3. No way to keep traditional ticket collection.

References

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Forister, M. L., Novotny, V., Panorska, A. K., Baje, L., Basset, Y., Butterill, P. T., ... & Drozd, P. (2015). The global distribution of diet breadth in insect herbivores. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112(2), 442-447.

Gillespie, K., & Riddle, L. (2015). Global marketing. Routledge.

Kotabe, M., & Helsen, K. (2014). Global marketing management.

Kraemer, M. U., Sinka, M. E., Duda, K. A., Mylne, A. Q., Shearer, F. M., Barker, C. M., ... & Hendrickx, G. (2015). The global distribution of the arbovirus vectors Aedes aegypti and Ae. albopictus. elife, 4.

Law, R., Leung, R., Lo, A., Leung, D., & Fong, L. H. N. (2015). Distribution channel in hospitality and tourism: Revisiting disintermediation from the perspectives of hotels and travel agencies. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 27(3), 431-452.

Limmathurotsakul, D., Golding, N., Dance, D. A., Messina, J. P., Pigott, D. M., Moyes, C. L., ... & Hay, S. I. (2016). Predicted global distribution of Burkholderia pseudomallei and burden of melioidosis. Nature microbiology, 1(1), 15008.

Liu, C., & Zipser, E. J. (2015). The global distribution of largest, deepest, and most intense precipitation systems. Geophysical Research Letters, 42(9), 3591-3595.

Messina, J. P., Humphreys, I., Flaxman, A., Brown, A., Cooke, G. S., Pybus, O. G., & Barnes, E. (2015). Global distribution and prevalence of hepatitis C virus genotypes. Hepatology, 61(1), 77-87.

Shaw, S. (2016). Airline marketing and management. Routledge.

Taneja, N. K. (2017). Simpli-Flying: optimizing the airline business model. Routledge.

Wensveen, J. (2018). Air transportation: A management perspective. Routledge.