The Engines of Travel: GDS Explained

Booking a ticket may seem as easy as making a few clicks, but behind the scenes, there’s a decades-old system making it happen. This is the Global Distribution System, or GDS.
While the average traveler scrolls through sleek booking engines, seasoned travel agents still swear by GDS. It’s the first term you’ll have to learn if you want to become a pro at travelling.

In this post, I wanted to take a deep dive into what GDS is, why it’s so critical to the airline industry (and many others ), and why it actually matters to you.

A Global Distribution System is a giant computerized network that connects travel agents with airlines, hotels, and even car rental companies.

Think of it as a massive travel supermarket with endless rows of flight schedules, seat availability, hotel rates, and car rental options, all updated by the second. GDS collects inventory, schedules, and fares from suppliers and allows OTAs (Online Travel Agencies) and other resellers to search and book.

Some of you may recognize these names (like if you’ve watched The Office, you may recognize Sabre), but most people don't . It is pretty funny because these companies are responsible for holding travel together.

• Amadeus (based in Europe)
  
• Sabre (U.S.-based)
  
• Travelport (which includes Galileo, Apollo, and Worldspan)

But despite being the backbone of the travel industry, GDS isn’t exactly fancy. A GDS "green screen" is a text-only command-line workspace: just you, a blinking cursor, and a whole lot of muscle memory.
Here’s a peek at Sabre’s portal to get a sense of the vibe:

Navigating a GDS means learning a specialized language of airline codes, fare buckets, booking classes, and schedule displays. Becoming fluent isn’t a weekend project either. Most agents spend six months to a year practicing daily under supervision to get it down truly. And most major airlines and hotels require onsite training for learning GDS before you even become employed.

When a travel agent searches for flight options, it’s not like they’re visiting each airline’s website separately. Instead, they’re querying from GDS, which pulls together schedules, availability, and pricing across hundreds of airlines in a few seconds.

Even though many airlines now encourage passengers to book directly through their websites (cutting out GDS fees in the process), GDS systems remain absolutely critical for a few reasons:

Travel companies are charged every time they access the GDS, or they can buy a particular software offered by the GDS on a yearly basis. This also means the average person doesn't have access to GDS, you must have an agency ID and PIN.

GDS has been the only way for decades. But, as time passes, its biggest issues are being exposed. This is because changes and updates to the system are just built on top of the same ancient software from its inception. Think of it like your phone. There can only be so many software updates before you need a new phone, because the system itself will continually slow down.

That is what is happening with all of the GDSs, and I can tell you firsthand, it’s getting a lot slower. Right now, I mainly use Sabre (one of the 3 major GDSs), and although I love it, I’m getting impatient.

Using Sabre now feels like the last week before you upgrade your phone. You know it's slow, and you know that time is coming to an end, everything feels so packed up, and even when you think it might start working better, your hope fails. For some reason, you are tied to that phone and don't want to let it go, you might even lose all your saved data(before the iCloud era, this meant more).

The same goes for Sabre. It holds a sentimental value in the industry, but its real value is diminishing. The question is, are there any alternatives?

Like every industry tool, something new eventually comes along. Airlines are pushing customers to book direct, and some even charge extra for GDS tickets. Airlines have long chafed at the fees GDSs charge per segment. (Southwest, for example, doesn’t appear in most GDS systems at all.)

In comes NDC, or New Distribution Capability, promising richer offers, dynamic pricing, and the ability to sidestep those fees entirely, though integrating it hasn’t exactly been frictionless. Airlines argue that NDC (New Distribution Capability) allows them to show a better product. GDS companies argue that it adds complexity, so airlines like American are pushing for NDC.

For now, GDS is still on top, offering everything from fare families to interline agreements to obscure little airlines you’ve never heard of, but if you ask me, the future will probably be a hybrid.

GDS systems are adapting to work with NDC-style offers while maintaining their massive, efficient distribution networks. This is what British Airways does, offering NDC content through GDS like Sabre, and also has a dedicated NDC platform, which they can plug their fares into.

GDS is one of those travel industry systems that most people never see, but without it, modern travel would be a “free for all”. From a $79 economy seat to a $15,000 first-class ticket, chances are very high that your reservation passed through a GDS somewhere along the way.

And while there's no shortage of speculation (or frustration) around its future, GDS isn’t disappearing overnight. Think of it like cable TV - still very much in use, but clearly being challenged by something leaner and more flexible. NDC is the streaming future: tailored, direct, and built around modern expectations.

The next time your travel plans come together with a few quick taps, remember: it wasn't magic.

It was decades of travel tech evolution, hidden just behind the screen.