GDS competition is impaired

To those who've worked in airline distribution for a while, the headline above will likely appear to be "old news". 

For decades, airlines argued with varying degrees of success, that GDS were inhibiting competition via "GDS parity" and other most favored nation (MFN) clauses.

More recently, competition has become impaired because of the tremendous differences in perceived financial strength/health between the big the global distribution systems. As of today, Sabre's market capitalization of 520m USD stands at 2% of Amadeus' 22bn EUR. This huge gap in market cap is not reconcilable with the notion of healty competition between two similarly strong competing entities. Travelport is a privately held company, but their bond rating sits stubbornly at CCC+ indicating "high risk/junk" status. As the GDS need to continue innovating for things like NDC and MAR, ability to invest will be one key success factor.

𝗜𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗶𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗮𝗶𝗿𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗲𝘀:

1. Ensure distribution strategy scope reaches well beyond GDS to include travel sellers and increasingly Agentic AI providers.

2. Prepare for difficult negotiations with a confident, but vigilant Amadeus, who seem to increasingly perceive companies outside the GDS or even travel space to be the biggest threat to their success.

3. Expect less bandwidth and willingness for complex GDS negotiations at Sabre and Travelport.

4. As the distribution option space widens, explore "pushing the envelope" activities with all GDS, when it comes to parity and non-discrimination obligations.

5. With GDS increasingly vulnerable, evaluate feasibility of "go-dark" options for GDS with a small airline specific footprint. 

Particularly, but not exclusively, for SabreSonic, Mosaic and Radixx hosted carriers: consider if an investment totaling two Boeing dreamliners (amongst a consortium of airlines) wouldn't be a small price to pay, to finally help establish a worthy competitor to Amadeus who actually acts in the interest of airlines.