Galileo GDS

Galileo is a computer reservations system (CRS) owned by Travelport. As of 2002, it had a 26.4% share of worldwide CRS airline bookings.

In addition to airline reservations, the Galileo CRS is also used to book train travel, cruises, car rental, and hotel rooms. The Galileo system was moved from Denver, Colorado to the Worldspan datacenter in Atlanta, Georgia on September 28, 2008, following the 2007 merger of Travelport and Worldspan (although they now share the same datacenter, they continue to be run as separate systems). Galileo is subject to the Capps II and its successor Secure Flight program for the selection of passengers with a risk profile.

Galileo is a member of IATA, OTA and SITA.

History

Galileo was founded in 1971 by United Airlines under the name Apollo Reservation System. During the 1980's and early 1990's, a significant proportion of airline tickets were sold by travel agents. Flights by the airline owning the reservation system had preferential display on the computer screen. Due to the high market penetration of the Sabre and Apollo systems, owned by American Airlines and United Airlines, respectively, Worldspan and Galileo were created in an attempt to gain market share in the computer reservation system market and, by inference, the commercial airline market. In response and to prevent possible government intervention, United Airlines started computer reservation systems and sought minority partners. Galileo was the product of this reaction.

Galileo UK was originally created from Travicom which was the world's first multi-access reservations system using the technology developed by Videcom. Travicom was a company launched by Videcom, British Airways, British Caledonian and CCL in 1976 which in 1988 became Galileo UK.

Recent Updates by the Company

1. Travel Agents now also book Amtrak Rail on the system and issue the tickets directly.
2. Southwest Airlines has entered into a marketing agreement with Apollo/Galileo and travel agents are now able to book reservations directly on Southwest.
3. The development team at Travelport has developed an online search tool called ASK Travelport where registered users can go and find out the answers to their frequently asked questions and queries.
4. After the take over of Worldspan by Travelport, now both the entities are jointly called as Travelport GDS.
5. In India, the distribution of both the GDS vests with InterGlobe.
6. Recently Travelport and Amadeus held talks for a possible merger which would lead to the biggest GDS in the world

Other major reservation systems

• Amadeus
• Sabre
• Worldspan

See also

• Code sharing
• Passenger Name Record

References

• Klein, S. (1994). "Coordination Mechanisms and Systems Architectures in Electronic Market Systems" (PDF). Proceedings. International conference on Information and communications technologies in tourism. Springer Verlag New York, Inc. pp. 262–270. ISBN 0-387-82543-6. {{cite conference}}: Unknown parameter |booktitle= ignored (|book-title= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)

External links

• Travelport.com, "Galileo"
• Travelport ViewTrip.com, public site for viewing reservations made through Galileo CRS
• Galileo.co.in, Galileo in India
• ITQ.in