“Does IT matter”

After reading the article by Nicholas Carr a short answer would be: Definitely yes. Although it seems to be obvious, it is not the only factor that people (including businessmen) take into consideration. One of the best example for it can be found in the tourism and hospitality industry. There are basic expectations of an average guest in a hotel. A customer relationship system (CRS) - to record all the wants and wishes, a telephone to call business and family, WIFI, all these became part of the „infrastructure“, but unpersonality hurts the guest more than we think. If he can’t get a good sleep, if he or she is not in the good mood, if there is a personal problem related to the family, nothing is more important than to have a nice, considerate receptionist, friend, whoever.

If the PMS is frozen, the guests don’t care, they just want to have a room to have a rest accompanied by a smile, which has nothing to do with a digital world.

Travel agency could be an other typically good example. Every hotel, service, tour package is available on the net. One of the many advantages is that standardised systems can be easier understood. When an employee wants to switch between companies, it is good for both sides if he/she knows how to use the worksystem. Less time spend on training, less employee, but more unemployment… It is a long story, but this is not our topic now.

There were forecasts about their negative future, but they are still on the market. We have to ask why? The reason is unambiguous: Personal treatment.

The history of IT development was interesting, but I have to argue with the statement that it came already to its end. I am sure that it still has new ideas that are unimaginable for the human being. 10 years ago it wasn’t visible how are we going to read dozens of books electronically, with one technical equipment which is only 2 cm thick. However it is absolutely true that vendors controll the demand of the consumers. Nobody, or just a very few company owners know what are their planned commoditiesfor the next 2-5 years, or who knows, maybe for the next 10-20 years.   

 Henceforth I wonder what are the future miracles of the IT industry after Ipad, 3D television, full hybrid car, etc.

Market share measurements on a global level: GDS, who is the leader?

To get an overall overview about these huge companies, I had to do a quite big research, as some of them are private companies, and better won’t publish their secret information. At least there are some studies, and their marketing information, which are available, and we could make a guess, who runs the biggest business. It is still obvious, and the most  frequently accessible information that there are 4 major global distribution systems, and the rest is insignificant. Just to clarify: Amadeus, Sabre, Worldspan and Galileo.

If we track the occurents we can get to know easily that Travelport is the owner of Worldspan (since 2007) and Galileo. The statistic measurement depends on the numbers of bookings, bookings in different segments of the traveling (train, air ticket, car rental), and hospitality segments. It can depend on the gross profit as well. There are some statistics which are global, or made on a continental level. Here is a research created by me, considered the total revenues (in 2008) of these companies:

Sabre $1.63 billion

Travelport $2.5 billion

Amadeus EUR 2,461 billion,  $3.69 billion

Considering some smaller GDSs (appr. 20%) , we can say that Amadeus is the market leader with ca. 38%, Travelport is on the second place with its 27%, and Sabre on the third with its 15%.

It is unimaginable that millions of booking transactions happen during 1 second in the world around.

And these huge companies own really big brands, e.g. I didn’t know that Sabre owns 70% of Travelocity, which includes lastminute.com, or Travelport owns GTA, which includes OctopusTravel. At the end I’ll just post some logos, which names might be familiar. Thank you for reading my blog!