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.

• Airline fees
• Airlines
• American Airlines
• Content wars
• DOT
• Fare display bias
• GDS
• GDS content wars
• GDSs
• Lingerie
• Orbitz
• Sabre TMU
• Travel distribution evolution
• Travel technology
• Travelport
• Where you can buy American