Heaven For A Hotelier: Why A Global Distribution System Is An Essential Tool

Running a hotel’s busy work. Quite frankly, if you do so or work in a senior position in a hotel, you don’t need telling. What you’d more than welcome, no doubt, is someone telling you there’s a resource that can emphatically help your day-to-day job – and boost your establishment’s reservations. Well, yes; there definitely is. It’s called a global distribution system (GDS) and, if your hotel isn’t connected to one, it’s about time you put that right.

Fundamentally, a GDS is a network enabling automated transactions and communication between travel service providers (hotels, airlines and car rental companies) and online travel agencies (OTAs). In practice, though, GDSs are so comprehensive in what they can do; they can truly become an indispensable, time-saving and money-making resource.

Time-saving

As a GDS can put incredibly useful information right at a hotelier’s fingertips whenever they need it (including the likes of customer preferences and local amenity details), it means they can save significant time trying to hunt down that all-important data, thus freeing them up for that just as important face-time with guests actually staying at the hotel – and driving up the establishment’s potential for good, solid, dependable customer service and guest satisfaction.

Money-making

Compiling rate plans is never easy work for those charged with reservation work in a hotel, yet thanks to a GDS deployed as a hotel distribution system, the process becomes a far faster, more efficient and thus potentially more profitable exercise. That’s because a GDS helps hoteliers calculate and decide on future rates with more accuracy as well as speed (like using a calculator in a maths exam!); ensuring the hotel’s competitive edge can remain in place from season to season – and instantly informing OTAs and booking managers in the network of the rate changes.

Moreover, decked out as it is with advanced, sophisticated marketing tools, a GDS enables you to update materials and content with reviews, offers, imagery and videos; thus deepening your hotel’s digital marketing footprint. And, if that weren’t enough, a global distribution system is also highly adept at helping to tailor packages to those all-important lucrative corporate clients. From amenity and entertainment preferences to preferred rooms, all the data you need to come up with for the perfect package for those clients you want to book with you over and again is there, ready to be retrieved at the literal touch of a button!