Information Systems Management for Travel & Tourism: GDS and BA

This report examines the Global Distribution System (GDS) and its application within the travel and tourism industry, specifically focusing on British Airways. It begins with an introduction to information management systems and the role of GDS, detailing the services offered by GDS such as airline ticket booking, hotel reservations, and price comparison, and then provides a comparison of GDS and Computer Reservation Systems (CRS). The report investigates the impact of GDS on the travel and tourism sector, including its effects on pricing transparency, customer convenience, and market penetration. It also addresses the security and data protection issues associated with GDS, such as the potential for data breaches and unauthorized access to passenger information. The report concludes by summarizing the key findings and implications of GDS in the context of British Airways and the broader travel industry.

Information Systems
Management for Travel &
Tourism

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
Question 1: Different services served by the Global Distribution system in the British
Airways...................................................................................................................................1
Question 2: Impact of Global Distribution System on the travel and tourism industry like
British Airways.......................................................................................................................3
Question 3 Comparison of service made by the global distribution system and computer
reservation .............................................................................................................................6
Question 4: Security issues faced by the global distribution system......................................8
Question 5 What are the data protection issues faced by the Global distribution system......8
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................9
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................10

INTRODUCTION
Information management system is the process of managing the software and hardware
combination. It is the computerised data base related to the organisation information which can
include financial data, customer data etc. the information us programmed and organised in such a
way that it will provide possible outcome to solve the organisation problem. Information
management system in travel and tourism industry is global distribution system. The report include
information related to the formation of GDS and the different services given by them such as hotel
booking, price comparison etc. This little different between the GDS and CRS where GDS deal in
many sectors and CRS deals in airlines and this is included in the report. The report also includes
the data protection and security issues faced by the GDS which are related to the customer PNR
number.
Question 1: Different services served by the Global Distribution system in the British Airways.
Global distribution system is the centralised and computerised services which is related to
the travel transactions which cover many things such as airline tickets, hotel room bookings, car
rental etc. Initially, it was established for the airlines but now it had extended to many services
which is related to the travel and tourism and now the system allow user to buy airlines tickets for
the multiple airline providers (Jovanović, 2016). It is the back end of the online travel based
services, the airlines which are served by the global distribution system are as follows:
 American airline who use Sabre.
 US airways that is called Pars.
 China airlines that is Travel Sky.
 Delta that is known as World span.
One biggest example of the Global distribution system
Amadeus which was established in the year 1967 which is the joint venture of Lufthansa,
SAS, Iberia and France which has grown in the past 20 years. They use more than 90000 travel
location and 32000 airline offices for selling and distribution of the travel services. There are more
than 480 million dealing per day and more than 4 million reservations per day. They are now
capable to buy complete travel plan at one time rather than negotiation with the single travel agent
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at which they can record the names of more than 75 million travellers at the same time. They are
dealing with the leading airways such as Qanras, British airlines, Lufthansa etc.
About Global distribution system
It is basically the reservation portal which is used by the travel agents which is use in air
booking, car rental, hotel room reservation and different travel services. Earlier they had only the
platform for the booking but now customers can compare different prices, reservation functionality
and availability to different online travel agents (Dedeke, 2016).
British Airways with the Global distribution system
British Airways is the largest airlines in the UK on the basis of Feet size and the second
largest as compare to the travellers share they carry. It is the main hub of the Heathrow and they
have merged with the Iberia and created the International Airline Group. IAG is the second largest
company on the basis of travel in Europe and third largest organisation in terms of revenue. In
2007, they have bought 12 Airbus and 24 Boeing 787 Dream-lines. British Airways have great
dealings with the Global distribution system where they have implemented $10 surcharge for the
per face component with bookings with the Global distribution system. IAG have declared that they
will mark up more cost for merchandising with the GDS. They have made dealings with the GDS
because their strategy was to keep focus on the serving large range of services on the booking
option of their partners.
On September 2016, British airlines had charged $18 as the surcharge from the GDS. If the
customer doesn’t want to pay surcharge, they can buy tickets from the direct source such as their
online websites. NDC connection and call centres. British Airlines have made three years
agreement with the GDS. With this agreement, GDS will able to access all the services and
published fares provided by the BA communicate to the customer through the indirect and direct
channels. The head of selling and distribution department of the company said that it is the best
agreement made by the company where they can put effort to reach at the global level and able to
sell their best offers and inventory. It will increase the selling opportunities for the organisation and
will lead to generate more customers with the best offers and services (Schegg and Stangl, 2017)..
Ancillary services which are provided by the company was made available on the website of
the organisation before the adoption of GDS, when they have made agreement with the GDS they
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can sell all the Ancillary travel projects through that and that is known as Electronic Miscellaneous
Documents. This have adopted as the new solution for the sell, accept and report payment for those
goods. All the alternative the travellers have, they have clear and proper knowledge related to that
and integrates to an agency back office system.
Different services GDS provides to the British Airways
 Global exposure of the Airline.
 Business to consumer and business to business distribution.
 24/7 access to the travel agent for the full multimedia and descriptive information.
 GDS is the entry door for all the corporate bookers (Bilgihan and Nusair, 2016).
 BA can target all the independent travel agencies.
 24/7 access to the travel agent to the company's inventory.
Question 2: Impact of Global Distribution System on the travel and tourism industry like British
Airways.
Global distribution system which have filled the Gap between the tour operators and travel
passengers worldwide by serving centralised services such as car rental, hotel bookings and airline
tickets. Their key focus is on the communication of the information, offers, inventory, rates and
real-time availability of the different airlines, bus tickets, car rental, hotel rooms etc. so that they
can make travel industry more sophisticated and informatics. They have linked with three groups
that are customers, service booker and service provider
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Illustration 1: Global distribution system integration
(Source: Importance OF GDS for Travel Agents and Tour Operator, 2016)
It is the computerised web services which serve real time availability with the reservation
functionality.
Impact of GDS
 Use of Global distribution system creates the rise in leisure and corporate travellers across
the globe
 It is very effective for attracting the world-class travellers and this is the reason why the
travel agents are growing every year.
 It has enhanced the pricing transparency and travel convenience and shopping experience
for the customers (Huang and Yoo, 2017).
 The GDS helps the travel representative to create their travel services available to
customers globally where they are not able to reach and be able to achieve efficient global
market penetration by the way of direct marketing efforts.
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 Corporate travel agents will mostly prefer global distribution system for the flexible
reservation for the air, hotel, car rental and holidays (Rahimi and Kozak, 2017).
 Travel representative get the platform to sell their products and services at the international
level.
 GDS is the base for the retailers to enter into the business globally.
 Agents find platform to update their inventory in the real time, where managers can able to
view the changes in rates and can able to alter the prices to provide discounts and special
offer to beat the competitors.
 It will not affect the marketing budget of the company like British Airways and show all the
data and holiday bookings directly to the clients.
 It also provides benefits to the customers such as unique selling points which will help them
in finding best rates for different flights
Illustration 2: Passengers who have book flights
(Source: Importance OF GDS for Travel Agents and Tour Operator, 2016)
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According to recent Global data released by travel-clicks in 2015 which shows that it is
going to be a flourishing year for travel agents by doing agreement with global distribution systems
for bookings. The graph shows that there are large numbers of the passengers that are booking
flights through Global distribution system. Nowadays people do not visit to the physical store for
booking their flights rather they use internet to buy tickets. They have mobile optimised travel and
tour portals such as Amadeus, Redbus.in, Sabre and Worldspan which is the most effective and
efficient way for domestic and international bookings. There is very drastic change in the behaviour
of the consumers, they have switched to the mobile search rather than the physical booking which
help them to select the best airline by comparing prices of different airlines and services (Jovanović,
2016).
Question 3 Comparison of service made by the global distribution system and computer reservation
System.
Basis Global distribution system Computerised reservation
system
1. Communication of
information
It transfers the information
about the hotel, bus and airlines
and many more
It only communicates the
information about the airlines
2. Bookings By utilising this system, clients
can book hotel, flight seat, bus
ticket etc.
By using this system, consumer
can only buy the tickets of
Flights
3. Access It also provides the access of
railway and bus reservation
(Dedeke, 2016).
It provides only access to the
flight tickets.
4. Designed It was also design to book
flight ticket but now customer
can book hotel room, bus
tickets.
It is designed to operate only
airline and it is the back end
office system for the booking
engine
5. Operations They are operated as the joint Company can get overview for
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ventures by the major car
rental, airlines as well as hotel
groups
the complete booking
performance of internet
distribution.
6, Customer Focus It helps the customer to
compare the price of different
airways, hotels, buses and
railways by having access over
the information
It is a computerized system
used to store and regain content
and conduct proceedings related
to air travel (Önder and Zekan,
2017).
7. Offer They offer complete supporting
activities to sectoral industries
like revenue management, crew
planning and accounting
(Schegg and Stangl, 2017).
They offer services related to
the air tickets and can compare
different prices of the different
airlines.
Question 4: Security issues faced by the global distribution system.
Global distribution system is used to co-ordinate travel reservation between the different
airlines and travel agents as well as it helps in price comparison on websites. There is lack of
security features in it where different attackers can harvest the personal data from different
bookings, they can steal flights by changing the ticket details and or earn millions of monies of air
miles by connecting new frequent-flyer numbers to pre-booked flights. Global distribution system
which was established in 1960 in one of the most renowned company that is Sabre. Most of the
passengers and travellers being attracted to this because they find it more flexible to book the ticket
and compare different prices. The technology which was used in it was when the passenger book
the ticket, PNR (passenger name record) is generated which is of six characters which helped
customer to do check-in and check-out. This PNR is the route of security problem in the global
distribution system. The research which is presented by the Chaos Communication Congress hacker
convention in Hamburg state that very less hacking is needed to exploit this information
(Jovanović, 2016). The PNR which is attached to the last name of the passenger is the password and
that information is PNR and traveller name is attached with every luggage and boarding passes.
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Many individuals post their photograph with their boarding pass tag on the social websites
such as Instagram, Facebook, Tumblr etc. which help the hackers to tract the information. The
biggest security issue they face is Six-character code which is easy to understand and guess by the
attacker. Hackers can cancel the flight for the exchange of the airline credit and can book new
tickets
Question 5 What are the data protection issues faced by the Global distribution system.
Global distribution system act as the technical intermediaries between the travel agents and
airlines. They provide information related to the availability of the transport services and price or
fare related to such services. They permit the travel agent to book the tickets on behalf of the
customers. There are different data protection issues faced by the organisation, customers and travel
agents, which are as follows:
Booking Blinders: When the passenger books the tickets for the air, PNR (passenger name Record)
is generated which contains six characters code and the last name is attached with the same such as
8EI29V which is also called as “booking code”, this code is easily understood by the hackers where
he or she can cancel the air ticket and book a new ticket. This is usually printed on the right of the
boarding pass as well as baggage tag. If that code goes in the hand of attacker, he or she can easily
piece that together the authentication token (Dedeke, 2016).
Brute-Forcing Booking Systems Security: Another way used by hackers is called Brute-Force
attack. Attacker can simply bang on the company's portal input until they find all the information
combination. Brute-Forcing is the trial and error method where some application is used to decode
encrypted data such as passwords, personal information which includes contact number, name etc.
Organisation need to use effective booking system security where each website should use Brute-
Force protection so that hacker will not able to steal or modify the information of the customers
(Önder and Zekan, 2017).
GDS Firms Hold Firm: The firm have downplayed the booking system security issues. They face
multiple security problem but they do not display to the customer and environment. They have
various cyber criminals which can steal their data related to customer’s personal information. The
ineffective method that is PNR which mainly cause large problem to the company so they should
adopt different strategy to generate PNR by which data cannot be stolen.
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CONCLUSION
It can be concluded from the project report that global distribution system is the joint
venture made by the several airlines such as American airline Sabre, US airways Pars, China
airlines Travel Sky, Delta airways Worldspan and UK airlines British airways. It is the
computerised and centralised which have primary focus on the air tickets in the past but now they
are in various sectors such as airline ticketing, hotel room bookings, car rentals etc. the report
includes several data protection issues and security issues faced by the global distribution system
which have occurred from the PNR number. They should make several strategies which help them
to keep their data secure and safe.
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REFERENCES
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pp.40-51.
Keller, B. and Schmidt, R., 2016, July. Data-centered platforms in tourism: advantages and
challenges for digital enterprise architecture. In International Conference on Business Information
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Sigala, M., 2017. Collaborative commerce in tourism: implications for research and industry.
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