GDS Alternatives for Travel Agencies: Modern Booking Tech Compared

ⵣ AtlasPerk Research · July 2026 · 12 min read · 11 sources

Why agencies are looking past the GDS

For decades, the Global Distribution System — Amadeus, Sabre, Travelport — was the only way a travel agency could book air. That is no longer true. The GDS still moves the majority of indirect airline sales, but two forces are pushing agencies to supplement it with other channels: cost and content gaps.

Airline surcharges drive the cost pressure. Lufthansa Group was the first airline group to levy a cost surcharge for bookings made via GDS in 2015 (OAG, 2022), and other carriers followed. One NDC aggregator reports that GDS-distributed fares run on average 20 EUR per ticket more expensive, depending on the carrier (AirGateway). On a hundred bookings a month, that surcharge alone adds up. Add the GDS’s own fees — one B2B-portal provider reports monthly subscription fees often in the $200–500+ range, plus per-segment transaction fees (dmcquote) — and the total cost of sale is high enough that agencies are asking what else exists.

Content gaps compound the cost problem. Low-cost carriers and some full-service airlines have pulled their richest fares, ancillaries, and bundles out of the legacy GDS channel, making them available only through direct connections or the IATA New Distribution Capability (NDC) standard. The GDS still carries broad airline coverage (AltexSoft, 2024), but the best fares on surcharged carriers often sit outside it. On the hotel side, wholesale bedbank inventory frequently undercuts GDS-contracted rates.

Four categories of modern booking technology let agencies supplement — or, in narrow cases, replace — the legacy GDS. The emphasis is on supplement. The GDS is not dead, and any article that tells you it is should be read with scepticism.

The honest caveat: alternative does not mean replacement

NDC is a standard, not a product. The New Distribution Capability is the IATA standard for airline retail distribution, using XML-based messaging standards to replace the traditional EDIFACT protocols used in legacy systems (IATA). It enables personalisation, dynamic pricing, and rich content that legacy EDIFACT cannot carry. Aggregators and technology companies implement NDC; NDC itself is not something you buy. The GDSs themselves now carry NDC content — IATA’s ARM Index Registry lists 48 NDC system providers, including the three GDSs (AltexSoft, 2024). NDC is not inherently anti-GDS.

Adoption is still early. IATA reported in June 2022 that 10% of all indirect sales were made through an NDC API, and approximately 80% of bookings were still not NDC-enabled (OAG, 2022). Only 7% of travel agencies surveyed were familiar with NDC and using it, while the remaining 93% either had no access to NDC content or were not using it. Those numbers have grown, but any framing that treats the GDS as obsolete is premature.

Cost may shift, not disappear. Building direct NDC connections to multiple airlines is expensive, and many agencies opt for NDC aggregators instead — but aggregators charge their own per-transaction fees or subscription costs. As one travel-technology analysis puts it: the total cost of sale may shift rather than disappear (SoftCloudTec). The point is not to eliminate distribution cost. It is to ensure you pay for the content and coverage your business needs, instead of paying a blanket fee for a system that no longer carries every airline’s best offer.

The GDS baseline: what you are supplementing

To evaluate what sits outside the GDS, you need to know what sits inside it. The three incumbents remain the broadest single source of airline and hotel content in the industry.

• Amadeus consolidates over 400 airlines, including 130-plus hybrid and low-cost carriers, and over 650,000 unique hotel properties (AltexSoft, 2024).
• Sabre connects over 420 airlines, including 150-plus LCCs (AltexSoft, 2024).
• Travelport carries 470-plus airlines (AltexSoft, 2024).

That breadth is real. The limitation is equally real: none of the three major GDSs will give you a straight answer on pricing (AltexSoft, 2024). Contracts are negotiated individually, and total cost depends on volume commitments, segment fees, and incentive tiers that vary by agency size and geography. This opacity makes it difficult to benchmark the GDS against any alternative on a like-for-like basis, which is part of the reason agencies stay on the GDS longer than they might otherwise.

GDS terminals also still run on cryptic command-line interfaces for many workflows. One B2B-portal provider characterises legacy GDS systems as taking months to learn properly, citing cryptic commands as a barrier, versus portal-based tools where agents become productive within a day (dmcquote). That comparison is self-interested — dmcquote sells a portal — but the learning-curve critique resonates with agencies whose newer staff have never trained on a GDS terminal.

The four categories of GDS alternatives

Modern distribution breaks into four categories, each serving a distinct need. They are not interchangeable. Picking the wrong category is a more expensive mistake than picking the wrong vendor within a category.

Category 1: NDC air aggregators

NDC aggregators connect your agency to airline NDC APIs through a single integration, letting you access direct-airline content — including ancillaries, images, and dynamic bundles that the legacy GDS may not carry (SoftCloudTec). They are the practical way most agencies access NDC without building and maintaining dozens of individual airline connections.

The aggregator market is expanding. According to the T2RL Travel Distribution Aggregator Market 2023 Report, by 2027 the aggregator market will serve 17 times more passengers than in 2022 (AltexSoft, 2024). Most aggregators maintain about 30 NDC connections each (AltexSoft, 2024), with some carrying more.

Three verified NDC aggregators illustrate the range:

• Verteil describes itself as a leading NDC aggregator offering a unified API giving travel agents access to 50-plus airlines. Its core product is Verteil Direct Connect (VDC), and it holds Lufthansa Group NDC 24.1 Certification (Verteil).
• Travelfusion positions itself as the largest LCC and NDC distribution platform, citing 400-plus low-cost carriers worldwide, 70-plus NDC full-service carriers, and over 150 million annual booked segments. Its tfFlight API serves OTAs, online booking tools, TMCs, and metasearch companies (Travelfusion). For agencies whose clients book heavily on low-cost carriers — a segment the GDS historically underserves — Travelfusion’s LCC breadth is the draw.
• AirGateway offers real-time aggregated content for 35-plus NDC airlines through its BookingPad front-end and AirGateway API, serving 489 IATA-accredited agencies and 6,032 travel consultants (AirGateway). It frames the value proposition around avoiding complex GDS contracts, booking commitments, or multi-year lock-ins (AirGateway).

Supplements or replaces? NDC aggregators supplement the GDS for air. They give you access to direct-airline content on surcharged or NDC-only carriers, but they do not replicate the GDS’s full airline breadth. Most agencies using an NDC aggregator keep a GDS for the carriers that have not adopted NDC — which, as of the June 2022 data, is the majority.

Category 2: B2B wholesale bedbanks and accommodation APIs

On the hotel side, the GDS is not the only source of contracted rates — and it may not be the cheapest. B2B bedbanks aggregate wholesale hotel inventory at net rates, giving agencies and operators access to accommodation content that often undercuts GDS-contracted pricing.

Hotelbeds describes itself as the world’s leading B2B solutions provider for wholesalers, supply partners, and destinations, serving approximately 60,000 travel distributors across 170-plus countries with 3,500 experts and processing 7 billion searches per day (Hotelbeds). Other platforms connect into Hotelbeds as a supplier — the AltexSoft review notes that Lemax, for instance, connects with Galileo GDS, Hotelbeds, Travco, GTA, and other third-party suppliers (AltexSoft).

One B2B-portal provider reports that portal hotel rates run 15–25% below GDS contract rates, with zero monthly fees and a pay-per-booking model built into the rates (dmcquote). That figure is the provider’s own characterisation and should be treated as an attributed claim, not a universal benchmark. The underlying dynamic is straightforward: wholesale bedbank rates are negotiated at volume by the aggregator, not by the individual agency, which often produces lower per-night costs than a mid-size agency could negotiate directly with a GDS hotel chain.

Supplements or replaces? Bedbanks can replace GDS hotel content for many agencies — the pricing advantage is structural, not incidental. They do not carry flights. An agency switching hotel sourcing from the GDS to a bedbank still needs a separate air channel.

Category 3: Modern flight and booking APIs

Developer-first APIs consolidate travel content sourcing into a single integration point. They target agencies and technology companies that build their own front-end rather than relying on a GDS terminal or a vendor’s booking engine.

Duffel describes its product as the best API to sell travel, enabling businesses to shop, book, and manage flights, stays, and travel extras (Duffel). Its Stays product offers commission on over 1 million properties globally, and it positions itself as accessible to any business, from startups to large enterprises (Duffel). Duffel does not publish a carrier count on its homepage, so the breadth of its airline coverage is not independently verifiable from publicly available marketing.

The distinction between a modern API like Duffel and an NDC aggregator is primarily architectural. NDC aggregators typically offer a booking-agent front-end (like AirGateway’s BookingPad) alongside an API. Developer-first platforms assume you are building the interface yourself. For agencies with in-house development capacity or a contracted technology partner, the API-first approach avoids licensing a front-end you do not need. For agencies without technical resources, a front-end-equipped aggregator or all-in-one platform (Category 4) is more practical.

Supplements or replaces? Depends on the implementation. If the API’s underlying airline and hotel connections are broad enough to cover your itinerary mix, it can replace the GDS as a sourcing layer. If coverage is narrower, it supplements.

Category 4: All-in-one travel-agency platforms

The fourth category is the most misunderstood — and the most likely to be incorrectly labelled a “GDS alternative.” All-in-one platforms unify content from multiple sources — including the GDSs themselves — into a single booking and management interface. They are abstraction layers, not replacements.

Traveltek is the clearest example. Its iSell internet booking engine lets agents search flights, hotels, cruises, tours, and ancillary products in one seamless transaction, drawing on over 100 top suppliers worldwide, including major GDS systems like Sabre, Travelport, and Amadeus (Traveltek). The company has operated for over 25 years, founded in Glasgow in 2002 (Traveltek). Calling Traveltek a GDS replacement would be inaccurate — it aggregates the GDSs. Its value is in the unified workflow: one search across GDS content, direct-connect airlines, and bedbank inventory, instead of switching between terminals.

Two other platforms in this category serve a similar function:

• Dolphin Dynamics is described as an all-in-one booking and management platform designed for travel agencies of all sizes (AltexSoft).
• Travel Booster is characterised as an ERP platform for travel agency management (AltexSoft).

Supplements or replaces? Supplements — by design. These platforms still route bookings through the GDS (and other sources). What they replace is the need to interact with the GDS terminal directly. For agencies whose pain is not the GDS itself but the fragmented workflow of searching across GDS, bedbanks, and direct connects separately, an all-in-one platform solves the right problem.

Category comparison

Category	Replaces or supplements the GDS?	Representative products	Anchor fact
1 · NDC air aggregators	Supplements GDS air — taps direct-airline NDC content the GDS may surcharge or lack	Verteil, Travelfusion, AirGateway	Verteil cites 50+ airlines; AirGateway 35+ NDC airlines (vendors say); aggregator market projected 17× more passengers by 2027 vs 2022 (T2RL, via AltexSoft)
2 · B2B wholesale bedbanks / accommodation APIs	Replaces or supplements GDS hotel content with net-rate wholesale inventory	Hotelbeds	Hotelbeds cites c. 60,000 travel distributors, 170+ countries (Hotelbeds says); portal rates reportedly 15–25% below GDS contract rates (one B2B-portal provider reports)
3 · Modern flight / booking APIs	Developer-first alternative for agencies building their own booking front-end	Duffel	Duffel positions itself as “the best API to sell travel”; Stays covers 1M+ properties (Duffel says). No airline count published
4 · All-in-one travel-agency platforms	Abstraction layer OVER the GDS + direct connects (not a replacement)	Traveltek, Dolphin, Travel Booster	Traveltek iSell cites 100+ suppliers — including Sabre, Travelport and Amadeus — over 25 years (Traveltek says)
GDS incumbent baseline (context, not an alternative)	The thing being supplemented	Amadeus, Sabre, Travelport	Amadeus 400+, Sabre 420+ (150+ LCCs), Travelport 470+ airlines (AltexSoft); pricing — “none… will give you a straight answer”

How to choose: matching your agency to a category

The right category depends on where your distribution cost comes from and what content gaps you are trying to fill. Four common agency profiles map to four different starting points.

You sell heavily on surcharged carriers

If a large share of your air bookings goes through airlines that levy GDS distribution surcharges — Lufthansa Group being the first, with others following (OAG, 2022) — an NDC aggregator is the most direct supplement. Routing surcharged carriers through an NDC connection removes the surcharge while keeping the GDS active for non-surcharged airlines. The aggregator’s own per-transaction fees or subscription will offset part of the saving, so model both sides before committing.

Your margin problem is hotel pricing

If the GDS is primarily your air channel and you are sourcing hotel content at contracted rates that feel above market, a B2B bedbank is the supplement to evaluate. Volume-negotiated wholesale rates versus individual agency contracts tend to produce per-night savings, particularly for mid-size agencies that lack the volume to negotiate deeply with hotel chains directly.

You are building your own booking interface

Agencies or TMCs with in-house development capacity (or a contracted technology partner) that want to control the user experience should evaluate a modern booking API. The trade-off is development cost and ongoing integration maintenance in exchange for not licensing a vendor’s front-end. This is a technical decision as much as a commercial one — if your team can maintain it, the flexibility is there; if not, a Category 4 all-in-one platform bundles the interface for you.

You want one search across everything

If the pain is not the GDS itself but the workflow friction of searching across GDS terminals, bedbank portals, and direct-connect airline sites in separate windows, an all-in-one platform is the answer. It will not eliminate the GDS from your stack — it will sit on top of it. Unifying the search-and-book workflow can save agent time and reduce booking errors, particularly in agencies handling multi-component itineraries.

Where this fits your technology stack

Distribution technology is one layer of a travel agency’s technology stack. It sits alongside (and often plugs into) reservation management, CRM, payment processing, and operational tools. The categories mapped above address the content-sourcing layer specifically.

For a broader view of how booking and management software fits together for tour operators and travel businesses, see our tour operator software guide, which covers the full operational stack from reservation systems to back-office management, and our technology for travel pillar for how the wider stack fits together. The GDS-alternative question this article addresses is the distribution spoke those guides cannot go deep on.

The practical sequence for most agencies evaluating a change is: (1) identify whether your cost pressure comes from air surcharges, hotel margins, or workflow inefficiency; (2) match that pressure to the right category above; (3) pilot the supplement alongside your existing GDS before making any permanent cut. Ripping out the GDS entirely is rarely the right first move, and the GDS remains the broadest single source of airline content available to agencies.

Frequently asked questions

This article was produced with AI assistance and verified by the AtlasPerk research team. Read our methodology →