Exploring Solutions and the Role of GDS Technology in Crossing the Current Pandemic Context in Tourism

COVID-19 has changed the world and people's perceptions of travel. It has had a strong impact on the tourism and hospitality industry (Chandrasekaran & Dhanalakshmi, 2020; Chang et al., 2020a; Kumar, 2020). From an economic point of view, the impact of COVID-19 has so far been more devastating than any other crisis in recent history (Hall et al., 2020). The crisis has raised new questions about how the tourism industry can respond to and recover from this crisis (Gretzel et al., 2020). Finding solutions and answers to such questions becomes a necessity for tourism stakeholders, including research communities (Gössling et al., 2020; Jamal & Budke, 2020). This pandemic should be seen as an ‘eye opener’ for stakeholders who need to prepare and develop strong response strategies and find solutions (Khan, 2020). Technology plays a central role in all this, and it is the basis for solutions to combat COVID-19 and the reopening of tourism and the economy (Sigala, 2020).

Moreover, it is necessary to understand the effects of the coronavirus pandemic on the tourist psyche. The psychological concepts of ethnocentrism, xenophobia, and perceptions of agglomeration refer to the perceived infectivity of COVID-19 (Kock et al., 2020), so solutions are needed to give tourists a sense of security that reduces perceptions of the risk of travel.

In the current pandemic context, tourists increasingly need to receive assurances from the tourism and hospitality industry that their safety and health will not be endangered during their trip or during their stay in accommodations and catering units. The hospitality and tourism industry has a valuable role to play in developing a strong health communication strategy (Jamal & Budke, 2020). Technology is seen as a panacea for our COVID-19-driven-needs to normalise surveillance and to ensure the health and safety of tourists (Sigala, 2020).

Nowadays, tourists prefer to plan their own trips and information technology (IT) is playing an increasingly important role in the hotel and tourism industry. Travel planning as a specific type of information search process for tourists, using IT, can be considered one of the central behavioural aspects of travel. To plan a trip, most tourists turn to intermediaries: travel agencies or online booking platforms. To provide quality services, these intermediaries use IT as a tool to support the tourist's decisions. Physical and online travel agencies use the services of global distribution system (GDS) providers to make the necessary reservations.

To advance in the future in terms of tourism, travel, and hospitality in the COVID-19 era, changes in the structure of tourist intermediation are foreseen, such as the modification of the roles of different intermediaries: tour operators, online travel agencies, own-web distribution, business-to-business and business-to-consumer, and the definitive dominance of digital intermediation (Chang et al., 2020b).

In the literature there are studies regarding research in technology in areas of tourism and hospitality, and also in tourism and hospitality management, but the strategic managerial approach and the involvement of IT and GDSs to provide solutions for the tourism industry in the current pandemic context are still being studied.

The aim of the paper is to provide solutions for the tourism industry in the current context of the COVID-19 pandemic, by involving IT and GDSs in the planning and booking process, as a decision supporting tool for tourists.

The widespread adoption of new technologies in tourism and hospitality industry in recent years has fundamentally reshaped the way services are provided and received (Kansakar et al., 2019). Tourism is constantly undergoing radical and, at the same time, rapid changes in terms of technology. Thus, the success of a business in the tourism industry has become dependent on digitalisation, with the final result of streamlining the business. Technological developments have led to an unprecedented revolution in the hospitality and tourism industry (Law et al., 2014). The tourism and hospitality industries have widely adopted IT to reduce costs, to increase operational efficiency, but also to improve the quality of services and the customer experience (Law et al., 2009). In this context, the understanding of technology-enhanced tourism experiences is very important (Neuhofer et al., 2014). Travel and tourism can be considered a critical field of testing and application for informatics, which, in turn, allows new services, products, and cooperation in the tourism industry (Neidhardt & Werthner, 2018).

IT is used in most sectors of the tourism industry and strongly influences the relations between producers and consumers, by shortening the distance between producer and customer, by identifying and satisfying the immediate requirements of consumers, and by introducing the possibility of innovation in attracting potential customers. Technological innovations bring together the full range of stakeholders in tourism service ecosystems, and technologically capable tourism experiences offer tourists the opportunity to create value at all stages of the journey (Buhalis, 2020). In the literature, we find many studies that have addressed various aspects of the implications and impact of information and communications technology (ICT) in tourism and hospitality, both from the supplier's perspective, on e-strategic management, e-marketing, guest services, e-security, and web design and analysis, and also through the prism of the consumer's perspective, regarding information search, evaluation of alternatives, purchase decisions, post purchase behavior, and technology adoption. In this context, understanding technology-enhanced tourism experiences is very important (Neuhofer et al., 2014). With the involvement of ICT in the rapid evolution of tourism, innovation activity in tourism has increased substantially in intensity (Aldebert et al., 2011; Foris et al., 2019).

Regarding the development of IT for tourism and hospitality, the first stage began with an evolution of reservations, more precisely through the computer reservation system (CRS), in the early 1960s, called the era of data processing, followed by the era of management information systems, the era of systems strategic information, and the age of information networks (Pencarelli, 2019). GDSs have their origins in CRS, being, in fact, an evolution of them based on a series of alliances, mergers, and acquisitions between suppliers, which were made with the distribution of information between customers and intermediaries that allows transactions, mainly between airlines, hotels, car rental companies, and travel agencies. GDSs are global enterprises whose structure is based on the maximum use of the Internet, characterised by the speed of information provision, the fact that it does not consume space, and the efficiency brought to customers in making sales, reservations, and information. In the tourism and hospitality industry, GDS refers to a network system that connects multiple vendors of services (including airlines, hotels, car rental companies, cruises, events, and activities) with end consumers or travel agents, and allows them to handle direct bookings (Pan, 2015). GDS is based on the actual time of obtaining the information released by the service providers and directs the request made by the clients, directly or through the travel agency, to the computerised reservation system used by the providers. There are three major competitive GDSs in the world: Travelport, Amadeus, and Sabre. They are constantly looking for new solutions for the development of the tourism industry through the exchange of supplier–customer or supplier–intermediary–customer information (Falko, 2016).

Online booking platforms have emerged as a solution to facilitate bookings, so the booking can be made directly by the customer, without the need for an intermediary. Online search has become an increasingly important tool in the travel and tourism industry and about two-thirds of online travel uses search engines for planning. Search engines, through their indexing, matching, and ranking technologies, control what information is available to consumers and how it is presented (Gelter, 2017). Many of these booking platforms have considered the usefulness of the mobile phone for the technologically inclined population. Thus, applications have been created that have a consumer-friendly interface and are very easy to use.

Given the latest developments in technology, there are all sorts of inventions that come to the aid of everyday businesses, which are based on the evolution of technology. New digital technologies (Internet of Things [IoT], virtual reality [VR], augmented reality [AR], artificial intelligence [AI], connectivity, Web 4.0) represent the technical platform that allows the convergence of the concepts of Tourism 4.0 and smart tourism, with content that overlaps in the context of the fourth industrial revolution (Pencarelli, 2019). Thus, the Industrial Revolution 4.0 in tourism is based on various inventions, among the most important being AI and IoT. AI technologies have redefined the hospitality industry (Ruel & Njoku, 2020). AI technology has become an important engine for the development of modern tourism and has penetrated every facet of the tourism industry (Zhang & Sun, 2019). AI provides automated, personalised, and intelligent travel services, allows travellers to learn about their behaviours, and provides a personalised experience. Therefore, new emerging technologies such as chat bots, VR, language translators, and more can be effectively applied in the tourism and hospitality industry (Samala et al., 2020).

IoT technology has a multifaceted impact on the tourism industry, along with the requirements for mobility and flexibility throughout the travel and accommodation experience (Verma & Shukla, 2019). The adoption of IoT technologies redesigns and improves the performance of all major business processes in the field of hospitality and can also be very useful in the tourism sector (Car et al., 2019). The IoT system implies that every thing communicates, every thing is detectable, and every thing interfaces (Pencarelli, 2019). IoT technology is the future, in which anything can be adjusted, controlled, or verified using technology. In the tourism industry, IoT technology involves the use of technical devices such as geolocation bracelets, mobile guide apps, ticket payment apps, VR technologies, and more (Natocheeva et al., 2020).

Therefore, innovation and technology can contribute to a sustainable growth of tourism, given that tourism has never been a factor of conflict, but a factor and a sign of peace and prosperity (Loureiro, 2019).

Today, the trend of creating a global functional process for the provision of tourism services, based on the international system of global distribution, which is becoming an engine for the world tourism industry (Falko, 2016), is increasingly foreshadowed.

Tour operators, travel agencies, travel bureaus, tour agencies, and bureaus of realization of tourist-excursion vouchers, as commercial enterprises, are under the influence of globalization processes, which determine the improvement of the tourist infrastructure (Shatskaya, 2018). These processes are accompanied by the creation of new types of tourism enterprises, such as GDSs, reservation platforms, and tourism clusters.

There are quite a few studies that address issues regarding the influence of GDS in the tourism and hospitality industry. Thus, the perspective of a GDS operator on trends and opportunities affecting the tourism industry was studied (Loureiro, 2018), including the transformation of traditional GDS to travel trade platforms (Loureiro, 2016), the development of IT for processing large volumes of information on Live Travel Space from Amadeus (Shpyrnya, 2019), and the feasibility of developing and implementing GDS tours into the product portfolio of tourism enterprises (Roskladka & Vrona, 2019). The appearance of GDS booking systems has improved and accelerated the system of interaction between the provider and the consumer of travel services (Shatskaya, 2018).

GDSs should be considered not as distribution channels, but as facilitators, providing interconnectivity between travel providers and distributors (Buhalis & Licata, 2002). Thus, it becomes important to understand the potential involvement of GDSs and how new technologies can help identify solutions in the tourism and hospitality industry to ensure guest and staff safety, but also increase trust among tourists that their safety and health will not be endangered during their trip or their stay in the accommodation units. In this sense, this study will also consider the investigation of solutions for the involvement of IT and GDS in actions to protect the health of tourists and inform them about measures to ensure their safety.

Strategic management methods and comparative analysis are used to formulate strategies, measures, and solutions to maintain the safety and health of tourists in the tourism and hospitality industry in the current pandemic context, using established models for analysing the external environment: PEST and Porter's Five Forces, concluding with a SWOT matrix. The macro environmental analysis takes into account the political, economic, sociological, and technological factors. In the external environment analysis, we include a comparative analysis of the most important GDSs in the world—Travelport, Amadeus, and Sabre—using the data and information present on their sites and we will identify the set of analysis criteria. Regarding the comparative analysis, two features and 18 attributes have been identified, which have been grouped into a following set of analysis criteria. Specific features are (1) market share, (2) founding airlines, (3) portals, (4) airline solutions, (5) passenger name registration, (6) cars platform, (7) rail platform, (8) hospitality solutions, (9) travel agencies solutions, (10) optimization services, (11) central reservation system, (12) hotel property management system, (13) catering and sales, and (14) business-to-business (B2B). Technological features are (15) new digital technologies, (16) mobile, (17) data solutions, and (18) platform services. Microenvironment analysis focuses on the following factors: competition in the industry, potential of new entrants into the industry, power of suppliers, power of customers, and threat of substitute products. Based on the conclusions summarized in the SWOT matrix, strategic proposals and strategic guidelines will be formulated that include possible measures and solutions for the tourism and the hospitality industry through new digital technologies and the involvement of GDSs.

To present the relevant information in a structured way, the results are presented in a logical sequence. The macro environmental analysis captures important aspects of the environment—technological, economic, and political—in accordance with the factors related to regional mentalities, or sociological ones.

Regarding the political-economic factors, in this period of global pandemic crisis, the antagonistic tendencies between the globalization phenomena and the centralist, nationalist ones are evident. The phenomena are more pronounced at the level of the European Union (EU) where states have adopted protection policies especially for their own citizens and have applied economic policies to protect their own business environment versus community policies. Euro-skeptical centrifugal trends are observed mainly in Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Hungary, and Poland and in the United Kingdom after the Brexit period. At the U.S. level, the phenomenon was more pronounced during the 2020 presidential election campaign through the conflict between global democrats who support Joe Biden and Donald Trump's nationalist conservatives. Generally, Democrats were supporters of the lockdown followed by continued expansionist policies, where as many Republicans were supporters of freedom of movement within the federal union and focused on U.S. domestic needs.

All these had major influences on the tourism and hospitality industry. Some states remained open to tourists with certain restrictions (COVID-19 tests), and others were completely closed. Thus, Italy, Spain, France, Greece, and Portugal, countries with a major contribution of tourism to gross domestic product, have encouraged tourism to minimize losses. Others such as Hungary, Poland, and Romania have closed a large part of the public catering units as well as the spa and wellness centres, the consequences materializing in numerous bankruptcies of the economic agents and the migration, largely irreversible, of the labor force to other economic sectors or to other countries. Isolation trends with disastrous effects on tourism and hospitality have also manifested themselves in the Far East, Africa, and Latin America. Turkey was less affected due to the specifics of tourism units in the area—isolated resorts and clubs, on large areas of land, which allowed the strict application of preventive safety measures.

We can therefore conclude that globalization acts as a pressure factor on local tourism characterized by strong seasonal phenomena. In this context, to create a global functional process for the provision of tourism services, within the international system of global distribution, GDSs can become a locomotive for the world tourism industry. The most important GDSs in the world are Travelport, Amadeus, and Sabre. Travelport operates as a GDS with the help of three top brands: Worldspan, Galileo, and Apollo. It deals mainly with real-time ticket booking, but also with booking of accommodations, rental car services and other products. It also offers technologies, payments, distribution systems, and other operations for the global system (Travelport, 2020). Amadeus provides booking services, search services, ticketing, and many other real-time processing solutions, necessary for both suppliers in the tourism industry and travel agencies (Amadeus, 2020). Sabre is a provider of technological solutions in the tourism industry, offering customers in the field of air transport, hotels, and travel agencies the opportunity to develop their business (Sabre, 2020).

The potential for the involvement of GDSs as facilitators of interconnectivity between travel providers and distributors results from the comparative analysis of the three major players: Travelport (2020), Amadeus (2020), and Sabre (2020), made in terms of specific features.

Market share. These companies are distributed around the globe in such a way that they can maintain their market position. Travelport is present in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East; Amadeus is present all over the world, except in the United States, and Sabre is used in the United States and North America. There is fierce competition between Travelport and Amadeus due to continued expansion, but Sabre has stability in North America and the United States.

Technology is the basis of solutions to combat COVID-19 and reopen tourism and the economy, offering various solutions: mobility tracing apps, robotised-AI touchless service delivery, digital health passports and identity controls, social distancing and crowding control technologies, big data for fast and real-time decision making, humanoid robots delivering materials, disinfecting and sterilizing public spaces, detecting or measuring body temperature, and providing safety or security (Sigala, 2020).

Sociological factors are analysed in terms of cultural characteristics that allow the study and definition of specific local or regional patterns of behaviour, consumption, and communication. At the level of the EU, all the progress made in recent years in terms of cultural differences through the policy of capitalizing on them under the slogan ‘Unity through Diversity’ seems to be fading, accentuating in this period of crisis local cultural differences of all kinds, in everyone's attempt to protect themselves first. Although the basic principle of the EU is that of unity, there is currently a phenomenon of stratification on four levels: the first level, globalist, of influence of Germany and France; the second nationalist of influence of Italy, Spain, and Portugal; the third, also nationalist, which includes the Visegrad countries—Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia; and the fourth, globalist, which includes Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.

Likewise, the phenomenon is manifesting itself more and more globally, communities isolating themselves to protect themselves, with unfavourable effects on the movement of individuals, goods, and funds. In this process, the tourism and hospitality industry experienced the most dramatic declines along with related industries, especially transport. To all this was added the extreme weather phenomena throughout the United States, Western Europe, and Greece, as well as the drought in Eastern Europe, which foreshadows a food crisis.

Microenvironment analysis reveals the following.

1. Competition in the industry. At the industry level, global and European competition is particularly strong, with trends of market monopolization in certain segments.

We summarize the conclusions of the external and internal environmental analyses through the SWOT matrix (Table 1) for the tourism and hospitality industry.

We formulate strategic proposals based on the conclusions summarized in the SWOT matrix.

There is a real potential for the involvement of GDSs as facilitators of the interconnectivity between travel providers and the distributors as well as the providers of technological solutions, all of which are likely to offer solutions both in terms of returning to normality of the hospitality and tourism industry, but also regarding the actions of protection and information of tourists regarding the sanitary safety and sanitation measures implemented by the providers, right from the moment of planning the trip. The technology is a foundation on which solutions can be built and identified to combat COVID-19 and reopen travel and tourism, and the implementation of new digital technologies such as AI, IoT, connectivity, Web 4.0, and so on, in actions to protect tourists’ health and communication are a huge step in rebuilding the confidence of tourists that their safety and health will not be endangered during a trip or during their stay in an accommodation unit. Moreover, it is necessary to promote cleaning and disinfection programs so that people know what tourism service providers are doing, but also behavioural protocols, so that tourists know what to do and how the staff of tourism service providers should behave, as well as the promotion of available technologies for ensuring the protection of tourists.

The results of the study are useful for small and medium enterprises to organize at a professional level, to develop better communication, to act efficiently, and to prevent the contamination of tourists with the COVID-19 virus in their units. The results help GDS providers reflect on possible improvements to the system's functionality to implement solutions that support tourists’ decisions in the current pandemic context.

From an academic point of view, this research helps to consolidate existing studies on the strategic managerial approach and by involving technology and GDSs in providing innovative solutions to the tourism industry, which are necessary in the current pandemic context.

This study is a small step forward in identifying solutions for the tourism industry in the current context of the COVID-19 pandemic. The study is a potential strategic guide for small and medium-sized enterprises to use IT and GDSs to cross the current pandemic context. This study still presents some limitations. The results of this study are general guidelines that could be adopted and not concrete strategies to be followed by most small and medium-sized companies. Future research could be expanded to complement this study by including studies focused on identifying specific, concrete strategies for types of activities in the tourism industry in the areas of accommodation, food, transport, and leisure.