gds: what rates travel agents look for may...

GDS: WHAT RATES TRAVEL AGENTS LOOK FOR

May 2016

AGENDA

What GDS and ODD are

GDS rate strategy

What information do the travel agents see on GDS

Corporate negotiated rates

Corporate and GDS marketing opportunities

evolution Distribution and GW Chain Code

What are GDS and ODD?

THE HOTEL WEB MARKETING AND DISTRIBUTION

Own website

OTAs

GDS & ODD

Direct

Offline & traditional wholesalers

Groups

THE MAIN HOTEL’S DISTRIBUTION CHANNELS

A Global Distribution System (GDS) is a network that enables automated transactions between travel service providers (mainly airlines, hotels and car rental companies) and travel agencies.

The 4 GDS companies are Amadeus, Sabre, Travelport (includes Galileo+Worldspan)

GDS (Global Distribution System) & ODD

Your

Hotel

evolution

CRS

Pegasus

switch

GDS

ODD

PMS (Property

Management

System)

WHAT ARE THE GDS RATE CATEGORIES?

RATE CATEGORIES

Must-haves:

Rack: Standard Published Rates

BAR: Best Available Rates

Corporate: Transient corporate business (high ADR)

Nice-to-have:

Negotiated: Qualified corporate & leisure

Promotional: Leisure business (low ADR)

Weekend: Leisure business

Package: Mainly leisure business (e.g. high ALoS)

Tip: the GDSs show up to 12 room/rate combinations, so focus on the rates that are relevant for your clientele, rather than on having rates for every rate code and every room type

What information do the travel

agents see on GDSs?

WHAT THE TRAVEL AGENT SEES

Today travel agents

have access to modern

“Rich Content Viewer”

tools that present GDS

data in the OTA-style view.

This allows agents to see

rich content data

including pictures, logo,

maps.

HOTEL LIST – SEARCH BY CITY CODE:

When agents

search for hotels,

there are a number

of ways in which

they can do this.

They can request a

list of hotels by city

code, like in this

example for search by

city code UTC

(Utrecht):

However, the content still comes from the old fashioned black &

green screen data and many agents prefer the speed of direct

“green screen” searches.

Agents can also search by

availability which will result in

a list based on availability

which displays the hotel name

along with the public rates

available.

These lists are random and as

such the order changes each

time the query is run.

Through GDS marketing activities

you can have the option to

ensure that your hotel is always

displayed in the top properties.

MULTI AVAILABILITY LIST BY CITY CODE

SINGLE PROPERTY AVAILABILITY – SEARCH BY PROPERTY

Hotel name Hotel name

Hotel nameHotel name

RATEPLAN VIEW IN DETAILS

After selecting the desired

Rate plan from the list agents

will look at that rate in detail.

The detailed view shows

the agent all aspects

including full rate

breakdown, restrictions,

policies, room descriptions.

Hotel name

Hotel name

HOTEL DESCRIPTION & FEATURESHotel name Hotel name

Hotel name Hotel name

HOTEL DESCRIPTION & FEATURES (CONT’D)Hotel name Hotel name

Hotel name Hotel name

HOTEL DESCRIPTION & FEATURES (CONT’D)

The more

information

you provide

the more can

be loaded

and presented

to agents and

the more

chance they

will book your

hotel.

Hotel name

GDS RATE STRATEGY: OPTIMISE YOUR GDS VISIBILITY

More that half a million

travel agents connect to

the GDS every day.

Take advantage of this

by making sure you have

good, up-to-date

content (both text and

photos), a good rate

strategy in place, with

availability open and

prices loaded at all times.

Tip: having the BAR loaded is essential but not sufficient. RAC (Rack), BAR (Best Available Rate) and COR (Public corporate) are in fact the most searched rates.

Remember the rate categories?

Corporate Negotiated Rates

TRANSIENT BUSINESS TRAVELLER: FAST FACTS

Corporate travel buyers mostly book through the GDSs,

because the GDSs enable them to place complete

bookings in the fastest possible way

Corporate negotiated rates ore distributed on the GDSs

with codes that restrict access to a defined set of agencies

booking on behalf of a corporation. These codes are

called rate access codes and are used in combination to

PCCs (Pseudo City Codes)

Corporate RFP tools are online marketplaces that where

buyers and suppliers meet to finalise their agreements for a

contracting season.

LOADING A NEGOTIATED RATE

The documents and tools evolution hotels need to be familiar with are:

copy of your contract;

rate plan shell loading request form, where you include the

rate conditions agreed with the client;

rate loading instructions

…to be sent to rateloading@evodist.com

Then you can relax, evolution’s team of

expert analysts will take care of the rest!

CORPORATE and GDS MARKETING OPPORTUNITIES

GDS Marketing Activities with Amadeus,

Travelport and Sabre) are available to evolution

Distribution GDS clients at preferred rates.

GDS Strategic Rate Campaigns run with GW

Chain Code by our corporate sales team

seasonally.

Consortia Programmes. What are your target

markets? If you are not sure of what packages

are best for you, our corporate sales team helps

analysing historic data and making

commercially smart a decision on which

programmes to subscribe to for the next year.

What is evolution Distribution?

We are one of the most innovative and

exciting technology companies in the

hospitality industry, providing a range

of distribution, reservation and web

design solutions to hundreds of hotels

worldwide.

WHAT IS EVOLUTION?

We were born out of the desire to give independent

hotels and small chains the chance to compete with

well-established hard brands with massive budgets. We

have levelled the playing field with our range of smart,

user-friendly innovative and affordable tools

OUR BACKGROUND AND OUR IDENTITY

From off-the-peg distribution and

reservation management products

to full-blown bespoke solutions for

the hospitality industry, our hospitality

solutions are ingenious, trustworthy

and effective.

evolution offers “next generation seamless” GDS connectivity to Sabre, Amadeus Galileo and Worldspan.

Since 2003, the GW chain code has established itself as a reputable

group of hotels that the Travel Agent community can book with trust.

GW participates in all of the GDSs Best Available Rate programmes

guaranteeing BAR rates across all GW properties.

To complement your hotels presence on the GDS, evolution offers

the option to access to VFM Leonardo’s Vscape for managing

images across tens of thousands of forward distribution channels

(including the 4 GDSs, all major OTAs as well as many non-OTA travel

research sites).

We also negotiate advantageous deals with corporate RFP and

leads generation tools and with all the major consortia worldwide.

OUR GW CHAIN CODE

WOULD YOU LIKE TO

FIND OUT MORE?

Get in touch at more@evodist.com

Thank you!ANNA KEREKES

DIRECTOR OF SALES, MARKETING AND E-DISTRIBUTION

akerekes@evodist.com