Online Travel Booking and Bidding Agencies - Silly question

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!

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!

10 years ago, the answer to #1 would have been "yes".

These days, it's much more complicated than that. Orbitz has had their "supplier link" for quite some time, which bypasses the GDS for many transactions (see http://pressroom.orbitz.com/technology_supplink.cfm). I know that some other large travel agencies have similar technology.

ITA does not get its information from GDSes, rather we get the information from the same place that the GDSes get it from - the databases of fares and rules, flight data, and availability that are available from third parties or directly from the airlines themselves.

We do strive to match GDS pricing, but it's often difficult, since the GDS systems themselves often can't agree on a price.

Thank you for the response. Great info! Can you direct me to information on who these "third party" players are? And what airlines use third-parties and what airlines do it themselves? I'd like to read more on these companies.

Published fares are generally filed with either
* ATPCO (www.atpco.net)
* SITA (www.sita.aero)

ATPCO has the lion's share of the data (and within the US and Canada, they have all of it).

Fares may exist that aren't filed at all - negotiated or bulk fares that are set directly between an airline and an agency, for example.

One source of airline schedule data is OAG (www.oag.com), though for up-to-the-minute updates to flight schedules you need a feed directly from the airline.

Seat availability data pretty much has to come directly from the airline.

ITA Hacker,

If you only wanted to, say, see the open seats on a flight or move to an open seat would you need access via a GDS or is there some other electronic means to gain this visibility or functionality? You can certainly go directly to the carrier's site but it's not highly scalable.

Can you point me to the options here?

Thanks.

Seat map data and the ability to change seats is controlled solely by the airline. Anything involving seats that's done through a GDS (or any other third party), is talking directly to the airline in real-time.

Thank you. Do you know if changes can be made across GDSs? For example. if I had a reservation made via Sabre and could I change my seat via a Worldspan connection? Also, do you need to have native connection to a GDS or can you acquire this access via a service like GoQuo (are there others)?

Thanks again for your help.

ITA Hacker - correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't there different levels of GDS access to airline inventory (the so-called "last seat availability" level of access)?

Thank you. Do you know if changes can be made across GDSs? For example. if I had a reservation made via Sabre and could I change my seat via a Worldspan connection? Also, do you need to have native connection to a GDS or can you acquire this access via a service like GoQuo (are there others)?

Thanks again for your help.

This is not exactly my area of expertise, but:

I'm pretty sure only the GDS that created the reservation and the airline itself are allowed to view and/or change it. The GDS holds the master copy of the reservation, and other GDSes wouldn't have any way of accessing it.

Furthermore, travel agency reservations within the GDS are probably further limited so that only the agency that created them can make changes.

Of course, you should be able to see the seat map from anywhere, but AFAIK actually changing the seat assignments would have to be done by the agency that sold the ticket or the airline itself.

ITA Hacker - correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't there different levels of GDS access to airline inventory (the so-called "last seat availability" level of access)?

The previous discussion was about seat maps and seat assignments, which as you might expect have very little to do with airline inventory. If the airline wants to save some of their seats for last-minute purchase, the inventory may already be zeroed out several weeks in advance, only to go back up later when the tickets are more expensive. Conversely, they may already have sold more seats than there are on the plane, but their overbooking computation says they can go ahead and sell a few more.

You're right, though, that different GDS systems (and partner airlines too) do get the data for their availability displays in different ways for different airlines.

Thanks again ITA Hacker.