gds: what rates travel agents look for may...
TRANSCRIPT
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 [email protected]
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
