The GDS' are the distribution backbone for travel agents, in-house corporate travel departments, and many of the Internet distribution systems like Expedia. They deliver rates and availability information for travel covering air, hotel and car rentals. The information is delivered to the travel agent, so that it appears on thr desktop computer using special sofware to search, display rates and book.

The GDS' Hotel information was originally all input by hand. Pegaus employed a house full of workers to do this work, much of this is now outsourced to India. The process is very tedious and time prone to error. Once the information is loaded sofware system maintian the changes in all GDS. All this information is managed by the Pegausus Switch.

To avoid delays and errors hotels and their technology providors opted to integrate the GDS information with their own reservations and property

management solutions. This was called seamless integration. 2 way seamless refers to the systems that can manage GDS rates from the hotel CRS or PMS. One way integration simply means the hotel system can view the GDS sales but not manage the data.

Seamless Integration is not the same as NEXT GENERATION.

Next Generation capability was built by the GDS to allow compatible systems to input the data directly into the GDS´s for an approved 3rd party sofware system. There are several such sytems in place. (list to be provided). This means that a hotel might use an online form to input their rates and data and this goes directly into the GDS. It substantially reduces the time to get to market and elliminates some errors that occure withy retyping data. GDS sold this option to vendors who it turn  incorporated it into thr hotel solutions. Some setup shop as GDS agents to offer this service. reserv internation was an example of the latter.

NEXT GENERATION ROBOTICS

The technology to update a mainframe is not trivial.   It involves robotics that interface online internet system with GDS mainframe computers. Maninframes are not Internet savy computers and cannot be accessed dorectly to change and add data. The data is sent via packets relayed on telecommunications network. The packet relay is interpreted by the Mainframe. As these mainframes are all different systems, protocols and standards were created.  Mainframes also have very specific rules on what characters are accepted. Charaters and in some cases words act as tigers to set off process in a mainframe, so the information sent to a mainfarme must be accurate and comply with their rules. Even years after inplementation the GDS update process was finding errors in data integrety. A simple stray quotation mark can triger a failure with disaterous results.

The Pegasus switch (originally called thisco, now called utkraswitch) is not a next generation technology. That why Pegasus bought  a similar sytem developed by Trust that was. Pegasus plans to upgrade all sytem by 2008 wit plan conversions starting with hotel factory (thr Central reservation system) in November 2007.

Next Generation provides GDS users with real-time rates and availability that is 100% identical to the information used by a hotel company's own reservations staff. The information is more quickly available and more accurate resulting in increased confidence and usability byy agents. With NEXT generation Seamless, agents are nore inclind to sell more using the GDS rather than book via telephone to assure their clients the lowest rates. Galileo Inside Shopper, Worldspan Integrated Hotel Source, Sabre Direct Connect Shop, the respective GDS' Next Generation Seamless products, were implemented by 2004.