Global Distribution Systems (GDS) are used by Travel Agents (TAs) and Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) to book hotels, offering real-time availability of rooms, rates, and dates. Even though GDS can help your hotel reach over 700,000+ global travel agents as they select the right properties for their clients, it also tends to be very confusing for many hoteliers. This makes getting the most out of your GDS more difficult than it should be.
In this three-part series, several of SHR’s resident experts discuss the major GDS challenges hoteliers are facing today, and practical ways to not only solve these challenges, but really get your GDS working for you. To start, I sat down with Alex Alston and Amanda Trinity, both Implementations Team Managers at SHR, to find out what the hottest, most frustrating issues that they hear from their own clients.
#1 The HOD — Who Are You?
An accurate Hotel Description (HOD) is essential for reflecting who you are to the world, especially the TAs. But that doesn’t always happen with the GDS. Why? It’s not hard to understand. “Hoteliers often don’t know what they look like on the GDS,” explained Alex, “because they often don’t know how to get access to it to look at themselves in the first place.” So, pulling your HOD often is your best bet.
This means reaching out to your CRS provider so they can go online and pull your HOD for you. Then you can look at it together and see if your content is accurate, or is out of parity. “You don’t want to find out your content is out of whack by having a guest or a TA tell you, because by then, you’ve probably lost bookings,” said Amanda. “Pulling your HOD on a regular basis can help you stay in content parity, and help keep that from happening.”
