The Difference Between CRS and GDS in the Travel Industry

A GDS is the Global Distribution System and the major ones are Amadeus, Sabre (incl. Abacus), and Travelport (incl. Apollo, Galileo and Worldspan). The term CRS is not used so much any longer as it became part of a bigger system: the Passenger Service System (PSS) which usually comprises of the CRS, an airline inventory system and the departure control system (DCS). Typical examples of a CRS are Shares from Hewlett-Packard (formerly EDS), but more importantly SabreSonic (Sabre) or Altéa for traditional carriers. For low cost carriers there is also Navitaire (like Altéa owned by Amadeus).

A CRS is solely responsible for inventory management (which is more detailed described in that article). A GDS (if it is involved and there is not direct distribution e.g. through the airlines own website or NDC) combines the inventory management systems of numerous (up to 500) CRSs from major airlines. It depends on the agreements (subject to negotiation) between GDSs and airlines, whether GDSs have several or all fares which are offered by the respective airlines (this is the discussion about full content deals). To make it more complicated, a CRS itself does not have fares (prices) only classes. The fares itself (along with the Fare Rules) are filed by the airlines with ATPCO (Airline Tariff Publishing Company) and the GDSs retrieve fare and fare rules from ATPCO to provide a full picture.

Finally, a new trend is direct distribution enabled by NDC (New Distribution Capabilities). This is a new communication protocol that replaces a protocol which has been around since the 1980s (EDIFACT – Electronic Data Interchange for Administration, Commerce and Transport) with a new standard (XML – Extended Markup Language). Airlines including Lufthansa, British Airways, Iberia and American have announced direct connect initiatives via NDC. They either introduced charges to book through a GDS or will be offering additional capabilities if booked directly through their NDC interface. The other aspect of NDC is that airlines want to take control of the distribution, such as provide offers based on ‘who is asking’, price ancillaries etc. – in order to differentiate from each other.

Messaging between a GDS (or any other system) and a CRS (= a portion of a PSS) was usually done in EDIFACT – however there are also structured interfaces available. With a few exceptions our implementation to the GDS also works with hooking directly into the Altea or Sabresonic system. NDC is a new standard in essence a new pipe in parallel to EDIFACT. So the best idea would be if the GDSs unplug their EDIFACT pipe and plug in their NDC pipe. However this will never happen as it would mean that all airlines (around 500) would need to sunset their EDIFACT pipe and move to the NDC pipe. Then there is still an open question about ticketing. Bookings via ATPCO are ticketed and paid for in the GDS. Bookings via NDC using the Airline API are done by the airline system.

In the traditional GDS distribution world, airlines filed their fares and fare rules in accordance with a limited amount of single digit classes with ATPCO. The GDSs retrieved fares and fare rules for a specific class of a specific airline from ATPCO and checked the inventory for such class – either in their own inventory cache or directly with the airline CRS. So, indeed, ATPCO is not part of the booking or ticketing value chain other than providing information to the GDSs. Booking and ticketing is carried out by the GDSs. Finally, the billing and settlement is usually done via a clearing house – predominantly ARC (Airline Reporting Corp.) and IATA BSP (International Air Transport Association Billing Settlement Plan).

OTA (Online Travel Agencies) may use the same GDS or multiple GDSs. It’s a choice each agency can make. Fares may or may not vary between GDSs – this depends on the content deals the GDSs make with each supplier (airline, etc.) whether or not the fares are the same or different. There may also be tax differences. If we are talking about a supplier (airline) that has full content deals with the GDSs you want to compare, the pricing should be about the same. Hidden from consumers are also markups. Although not so common with air fares (as agencies get commissions from airlines), agencies can markup their fares or rates any way they seem fit. Agencies may also get negotiated fares (if you bring a lot of business to a certain provider, that provider could provide you with better fares/rates), which they markup to the closest published fare.

Airlines use the CRS as part of their PSS as their inventory management system. It is just as confusing because all of the major GDSs also ‘own’ a PSS and thus the distinction is not done correctly in many cases.

Whether or not an airline lists all or some of their inventory in the GDS is a negotiation between the airline and the GDS. The airline may want to be in the GDS as GDSs offer a huge sales channel. However, the airline also has to pay commission and overrides for distribution via the GDS. The GDSs want to be a one-stop shop and hence prefer to have the full spectrum of all airlines with all fares. Some airlines only want to provide their higher priced fare in the GDS, which is not a preference of the GDSs.

The complexity of using different GDS for agents as well as agencies and TMCs is that each GDS has their own interface (API, Agent Desktop, cryptic screen). Hence, one needs to learn different ‘languages’ (if the cryptic screen is used), work with different graphical user interfaces (such as Sabre Red or Amadeus Selling Platform), or have separate integrations into separate APIs (such as Sabre webservices, Amadeus webservices, Travelport universal API, Galileo webservices, Worldspan DIR, etc.). Exactly this has been a profitable niche market for us since the year 2000: to provide one API (or even Agent Desktop) to all major GDSs, where among others two of the top three TMCs use our services. Obviously, there is also a commercial aspect: agreements with each GDS are required (even if you use an aggregator such as us).