There are a number of ironies about Travelport's Universal desktop, details of which were unveiled last night.
First of all, it has grown out of G2 Switchworks, one of the GDS new entrants or GNEs that was founded a few years ago to take on the traditional GDS.
It seems Travelport quietly bought up the intellectual property of G2 this time last year and, one of the co-founders, Mike Harbin, is now on board with Travelport.
It's also ironic that this project has come out of a GDS. Desktop products have always been among the solution stable from the distribution giants but not ones with access to blogs, widgets, instant messaging and other web links.
The platform is also aiming to be GDS neutral and includes some of the better features of Worldspan.
This is going to be a phased introduction over the next few quarters and what was demonstrated is definitely not all there yet but the concept looks good.
Were we wrong to call them dinosaurs?
Still a little early to call GDS systems dinosaurs!
But I have written some background as to what may be one of the larger challenges that GDS systems will face in the next few years - moving towards a customer centric (rather than booking centric) system view
http://www.tourcms.com/blog/2009/02/12/booking-vs-customer-centric-travel-company-software/
Let's not forget that the dinosaurs existed on Earth for millions of years before they became extinct and they underwent a tremendous amount of evolution during that period. GDSs have shown that they have the ability to evolve and adapt, it seems to take much longer than smaller more nimble companies. They only need to evolve however if there is evolutionary pressure on them to do so. Perhaps with the current climate, the pressure will increase and we will see more innovation coming out of the big three (GDSs, not automatkers). They are, afterall, the ones that have the most to lose by not evolving.
Okay, you could call me biased since I work for a GDS - or travel technology company - as Amadeus likes to be known these days.
There has been an evolution among the GDSs but some things shouldn't change - such as the 0.3 second response times and 99% system uptime. We don't want to "throw the baby out with the bathwater" as the saying goes. GDSs work very well for managed and business travel. They also offer an excellent marketplace view (e.g. 500 airlines, 80,000 hotel properties, etc.).
Are there content gaps? Sure. But less so today than 5 years ago. Besides, the migration to Open Systems and a more collaborative approach with innovative 3rd party developers is going to enable GDSs to pick up the pace in a rapidly changing market.
For a definition of dinosuar read: Viewdata, not GDS.
Yes, well, Amadeus could do with sorting out some of their basic, er... idiosyncracies before they go any further. Like multi-hub, not taking out frequent flyer numbers, not having to passenger relate company information for starters - Oh! and the hopeless re-issue performance. Then they could look at bells and whistles.
I digress, the GDS is not a dinosaur. Invented back (when - 1980 something?) It can move someone from point a on the globe to point b securely and efficiently. No-other single piece of software that clever has ever been invented since and we (nearly) all still use good old code entry. The gaps in inventory is due to rather challenged airline (mainly)thinking - much of which is pointed to re-inventing the wheel (and spending a fortune on doing it). Airlines should learn, they move people from A to B, GDS's provide the wherewithall and agents (on or off line) sell the product to the public. Rather simplistic thinking, I know, but has been known to work.