Major global distribution system (GDS) currently use in the tourism industry and their description.

A global distribution system (GDS) is a network, which enables travel agencies and others within the
travel industry to access travel products and services, including hotel rooms, airline tickets, and car
rentals, to carry out transactions. Crucially, they provide end-users with real-time access to inventories
and pricing is one of the most important distribution channels for those in the hotel industry. These are
the current (GDS) that are used in the tourism industry

 Amadeus

Amadeus GDS is one of the major GDS systems and was originally created by the Air France, Lufthansa,
Iberia and SAS airlines as a European-based alternative to Sabre, which is a similar GDS system based in
the United States. It was founded in 1987 and while it initially focused on connecting end users with
airline inventories, it has since grown to offer access to other travel services, including hotel rooms and
car rental services. There are numerous benefits for hotel owners using the Amadeus GDS system, with
the most obvious being distribution to travel agents and customers on a global level. The platform offers
both business to business (B2B) and business to customer (B2C) distribution and provides travel
agencies with 24-hour access to hotel inventories.

 Sabre

Sabre is regarded as one of the ‘big three’ GDS systems, with a history that can be traced back to the
1960s. The company and network are based out of Southlake, Texas, in the United States, and it is
estimated that around 60,000 travel agencies around the world currently utilize the system to sell travel
products. Although Sabre technically has a smaller market share than one of its rivals, Amadeus, a larger
percentage of bookings made using the Sabre system are hotel-related, as opposed to airline-based. For
hotels and others in the travel industry, the primary benefit of using the Sabre GDS is the ability to
distribute to travel agents on a global level, providing them with 24-hour access to hotel inventories. In
addition, Sabre also offers several hospitality technology solutions, which can be valuable.

 Travelport

The Travelport GDS is regarded as one of the three major global distribution system operators. The
company has its headquarters in the United Kingdom but can trace its history back to 1971, and the
creation of the Apollo GDS in the United States. Indeed, today, Travelport is comprised of the Apollo,
Worldspan, and Galileo GDS systems. Travelport GDS was initially geared towards airline companies,
it is today used to distribute a variety of products and services for those in the travel industry, including
hotel rooms and hotel products.
One of the major benefits of Travelport GDS is the ability for hotel owners and others within the travel
industry to distribute their products to travel agencies all around the world. Indeed, this global
distribution is especially relevant with Travelport, because it is less reliant on its home market than its
two main rivals.
While the Amadeus GDS is especially strong in Europe, and Sabre is strong in the North American
market, Travelport’s strength is more evenly distributed across the continents. This is advantageous, as it
provides access to some of the strongest travel markets in the world, including North America, Europe,
and Asia.
Advantages of using GDS specifically for airlines, tour operator, and travel agencies.

Advantage of GDS to Tour Operator is GDS is a computerized web service that provides pricing, real
time availability, centralized data display with reservation functionality to the global travel industry in
a very unified process. The four main GDS providers in the travel industry are Amadeus, Sabre,
Galileo and World span helping travel agents growing volume of travel transactions. It was revealed
that the GDS is and will remain as the most important channel of distribution for airlines, hotels and car
rental companies alike. However, Internet also allows the GDS companies, label providers and even the
traditional travel agents to host websites directly which access to their connections and provide the
services previously offered by offline travel agents.