Content wars
Distribution Minutia

GDSs and Airlines: The Soap Opera Continues

27/04/11 11:49
If you like soap operas, you’ll love watching the battles between the major U.S. airlines and their creations, the GDSs. “It’s the house the airlines built,” says Bob Offutt, senior technology analyst with PhoCusWright. And in the past six months, what was already a contentious relationship has become a litigious one with three lawsuits involving airlines and GDSs. Basically, if the airlines and the GDSs were families, you wouldn’t want to spend Thanksgiving with them - unless you had a large bottle of Jim Beam to get you through the meal. Read More...

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Where American Airlines is--and isn't!

25/01/11 06:54
American Airlines is leading the charge when it comes to transforming airline ticket distribution. Here’s where it is -- and isn’t -- and a little of the why behind it. The battles between the GDSs and the airlines that created them are ongoing and always entertaining! Read More...

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What is travel distribution?

Computer res systems (CRSs), created by the airlines 50 years ago, were as critical to the democratization of travel as the wide-bodied airplanes that meant airlines could fly Americans to Europe, en masse and affordably.
Airlines eventually spun off their offspring, the CRSs, into separate companies. They morphed into global distribution systems (GDSs), the go-to marketplace for anyone who wanted to shop for an airline ticket and find the fare and schedule that was best for them. But they didn't do this for free and the fees they charged the very airilnes that created them, laid the groundwork for the so-called content wars, an ongoing battle between airlines and the GDSs over the evolution of distribution.
I cover all this for my day job at Performance Media Group. And in this section of my website, I'm sharing the columns I write for Travel Pulse Daily. They're written for the folks who are in the business of selling travel. Why should you, a travel consumer, care about content wars? Because ultimately, it's going to affect what you pay to fly.
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