arlingtonflyer
Feb 18, 08, 2:56 pm
I read an interesting presentation that made me want to understand how flights today are bought and sold, and the systems that are used. It appears straight forward for an airline to sell flights online. But then I wonder how online travel agencies sell tickets (travelocity, expedia, a startup travel agency?).
1 - Do all online travel agencies use Global Distribution Systems (GDS) as their vehicle to make reservations?
2 - Where does the ITA software fit into this equation? I believe you can't make any bookings using ITA. Rather, it seems that many MR seekers use ITA to view valid fare combinations (crawling several GDS's) given their search criteria - and then based on ITA's results, they use a travel agent (who is likely to use a GDS) to make the reservation. When the travel agent searches for fares they should likely see the same results as ITA returned. Am I hitting the mark?
Any insight would be appreciated!
Here is the presentation I read:
http://www.demarcken.org/carl/papers/ITA-software-travel-complexity/img0.html
1 - Do all online travel agencies use Global Distribution Systems (GDS) as their vehicle to make reservations?
2 - Where does the ITA software fit into this equation? I believe you can't make any bookings using ITA. Rather, it seems that many MR seekers use ITA to view valid fare combinations (crawling several GDS's) given their search criteria - and then based on ITA's results, they use a travel agent (who is likely to use a GDS) to make the reservation. When the travel agent searches for fares they should likely see the same results as ITA returned. Am I hitting the mark?
Any insight would be appreciated!
Here is the presentation I read:
http://www.demarcken.org/carl/papers/ITA-software-travel-complexity/img0.html