Hotel Tech — Why hotels, Vacation Rentals and travel agents still so unconnected?
Ever wondered by Travel Agents still rely on the GDS?
I thought the GDS would be dead by now
It is:
- Expensive
- Not user friendly
- Complicated to setup
- Not suitable for small properties and vacation rentals
Background: The GDS was set up originally for Travel Agents to book flights, you remember the agent typing into the green screen with text? Yes that is GDS. GDS was also expanded to book hotels and currently there is no real alternative.
I always thought it’s funny that they can book hotels with text but can’t see the picture of the hotel or room types on offer.
Travel Agents can connect direct to hotel PMS or Channel Manager?
It’s crazy but this is actually not a thing currently, there are a few reasons:
- Theres too many different PMS available (1300+ of them roughly)
- Channel Managers don’t let small players connect and get agreements
- There is no central system to connect everyone ← Channex mission :)
Wholesalers are a solution?
Yes and no, They get the closest to fixing the problem
Theres lot’s of travel agent systems that can book a via a wholesaler like Hotelbeds. The problem is even the biggest wholesaler has less than 200k hotels online but there are nearly 1 million hotels and 5–10m vacation rentals.
- Wholesalers are hard to get an account setup
- Add 5–20% margin on the prices
- Request allotments/allocations and complicated contracts and rate setups.
Blockchain startups to the rescue?
Some people believe that there are 2 startups that will take over from the Wholesalers and the GDS. Currently from my knowledge there are 2 players called:
- Arise — https://arise.travel/
- Winding Tree — https://windingtree.com/
I hope they gain traction since current providers take a big chunk of commissions for being the middle man of a transaction.
I’m still not 100% sold on why blockchain is required but it does sound exciting!
Channex to help?
Yes we will have a role to play by connecting availability and prices to anyone who needs. With so many systems and so many that are not interconnected it’s a tough life for any new providers to start
It’s impossible as a new service to connect 100s of systems and you simply will get blocked for being “too small” at the beginning.
We are looking forward to the next wave of hotel technology providers to get traction!
