Global Distribution Systems: A Field Study of Their Use and Advantages in Travel Agencies

A field study of 33 Canadian and Belgian travel agencies has allowed us to identify various factors determining the use and advantages obtained of global distribution systems (GDS) in the tourism industry. These systems include Galileo (13 agencies), Sabre (12), Worldspan (6) and Amadeus (2). Determinants of the behavior and perception of the travel agencies toward their GDS were found to be the organizational context of GDS implementation, the sophistication of the GDS as an inter-organizational information system, and the sophistication of the firm’s own organizational information system.