Global Distribution Systems, what are they?

Global Distribution Systems (GDS) are Travel Agent Reservation booking channels which include Amadeus, Sabre, Galileo and Worldspan.

These systems are used by Travel Agents to make Hotel reservations, airline bookings and rental car bookings. Where Hotels are concerned, Travel Agents have access to room inventory for hotels that have a relationship with a Global Distribution System Provider.

A Global Distribution Service Provider will provide access to these systems and have a contract with the Hotel, either directly or through a property management system vendor.

Hotel inventory may be managed by one of the two following methods.

1. Manually by the hotel where they update their inventory using an extranet and typically login to the extranet via the Internet.
2. Automatically using an interface linking the property management system and the Global Distribution Provider. Not all property management systems provide this interface, however it is becoming more common. Full automation of the procedure is available with a 2 way interface.

Some Property Management Systems vendors provide a 2 way interface that will send up room inventory and rate information to the GDS channels and receive reservations seamlessly from the GDS booking channels.
These reservations will transfer directly into the Property Management System.

Other Property Management System vendors are only able to provide a 1 way interface that will only facilitate the transfer of the reservations from the GDS channels into the Property Management System, however the inventory information is not transferred, this would need to managed manually within an extranet.

Managing inventory manually using an extranet is a very time consuming way to manage inventory. If your property management system vendor offers a GDS interface, the cost associated with setup and implementation will typically out weigh the labour resources used to update an extranet over time.

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