I work in the industry, and I disagree. If we want to be more exact, most of the airline volume is through Global Distribution Systems (GDSs). I'd say that truly "direct" sales are in a minority.

But sales through aggregators have soared (mostly using the Amadeus GDS)

As mentioned in other comments, corporate travel does not buy direct and, along with luxury travel, are the two last holdouts of travel agents - I agree with the article in that agents are becoming more irrelevant for non-corporate bookings, although they're fighting back :) .

See for example:

https://seekingalpha.com/article/3110756-global-distribution...

"market share loss due to disintermediation, which was starting to become a problem for GDS companies, has slowed considerably, according to Amadeus.

Airlines have realized that the reach GDS companies provide -- especially to business travelers -- cannot be matched by the airlines themselves.

Low-cost carriers (LCCs) like RyanAir (NASDAQ:RYAAY) and Southwest Airlines (NYSE:LUV) didn't use GDS to sell their tickets. After their initial growth period, during which they tapped deal-seeking customers, their growth slowed down. They couldn't access the higher-margin business travelers. Hence, most of the LCCs, including Southwest, RyanAir, and jetBlue (NASDAQ:JBLU), had to come back to GDSs to increase their growth rates."

GDSs have been so prevalent for so long in the industry that their use surely counts as the new 'direct sales', no? Like if I phone up an airline directly to book, based on an advert I saw which was funded by them directly, the airline would typically still use a GDS to make the booking?

That last quote is somewhat misleading; Southwest adopted the Amadeus GDS for their internal reservations in 2007, replacing a homegrown system. In their 2015 exposed their bookings through Amadeus but only through i:FAO for corporate customers, not the public who still have to buy direct.

Also, the definition of 'most of the LCCs' conveniently excludes, well, most of the World's LCCs...

That's true at a high level, but off on some dates.

Southwest cut a deal with Amadeus in 2007, but is still using the internal homegrown copy of Sabre for all domestic bookings. If you book something that lands outside the US, it goes via Amadeus. They will move all reservations to Amadeus, but over the next year or so.

They exposed bookings to corporate booking tools starting in 2009, but not via a GDS, but rather by a private connection.[1]

Then, in 2015, they exposed bookings via Amadeus, including domestic, to corporate travel tools. But, the booking itself does land in the aforementioned homegrown reservation system.

[1]https://www.concur.com/newsroom/article/concur-and-southwest...

> In particular, Southwest does not sell through aggregators at all

...they sell through aggregators, just not to the general public. For business travel they pretty much have to, otherwise they'll miss out on the market (large companies usually requiring their employees to book business travel through a central agency).

That wasn't true until very recently. they allowed you to see their latest prices, but did not allow you to book.

Most of their travel traffic is from the leisure segment anyway, so them not getting business traffic isn't the end of the world

> Most of their travel traffic is from the leisure segment anyway, so them not getting business traffic isn't the end of the world

This. Southwest (and the other LCCs) can't really compete with the 'kickbacks' provided by traditional carriers. If you're responsible for a lot of corporate travel, or you do a lot of corporate travel yourself, carriers like AA effectively make it so you never have to buy a personal ticket, and get upgraded to a higher level of service on many of your flights.

With you here. I only fly delta and end up just booking on their site. I'd rather be eligible for an upgrade than being in a fare code that doesn't qualify.

Not sure why the author thinks travel agents are useless. You don't (or shouldn't be) paying them so it's not like only the rich benefit. I used an agent recently when I was meeting someone in Orlando and needed our flights to arrive around the same time and have transportation waiting. A lot less stressful than trying to compare between carriers. My agent was able to track our flights and had to move the driver back an hour due to a delay - something I couldn't have done easily from the air.

> Not sure why the author thinks travel agents are useless. You don't (or shouldn't be) paying them so it's not like only the rich benefit.

My employer pays for ours. They've never found a cheaper fare than I've found, and we pay them per person per flight booked. This is the first year that they haven't proposed a flight/hotel stay combo that wasn't anything like what I specified.

As far as I can tell, they're just a way to make sure that higher-level sales folks don't book a $3k 2-hour flight that includes a masseuse.

They are invaluable for last-minute itinerary changes, at least that's what I've found.

When I used to work in corporate, the company travel agent sorted out serious crap every time it mattered. Once showed up at the airport, Friday evening, everyone on the way home. Surprise snowfall closed the airport and all flights cancelled. Called the booking people and they sorted out a taxi, hotel and other flight in 5 minutes while everyone else was struggling to find a cab. When I got to the hotel, there was a massive queue at reception which I just sailed past. I love a good travel desk.

This also goes for vacations. Why stress over details when you can have someone else take care of stuff?

I know someone with a golf vacation business and a good chunk of their business is via travel agents from Germany. Not sure if it's just bigger over there or if it's more prevalent for group bookings that they cater to for golf.

Your point about keeping corporate bookings honest makes sense. I've found executive assistants to be very good at research and bookings though. But I suppose they could be more easily influenced than an outsourced agent.

Agreed. I use orbitz expedia etc to find out who flies a route then i buy tickets from the airline. I don't see any savings on the aggregators and i want someone - an airline - to own it if something goes wrong, as it has on my last few trips.

I use Kayak, and it always kicks me directly to the airline to purchase. Does that get counted as the airline selling its product directly?

If the airline doesn't pay Kayak, then yes, that counts as a direct sale. As far as I know, Kayak makes their money on hotel bookings. The air bookings are a loss leader.

I'm still astonished that Southwest can pull that off. Or perhaps just more astonished at how long I used flight aggregators without realizing that Southwest flights will never show up. I suppose I always knew Southwest existed, I just must have figured that they didn't have any affordable flights for my routes. Turns out I live near two airports with a ton of Southwest flights, and most places I fly too have plenty of routes. I use them almost exclusively now.

I'm looking at Southwest to fly to John Wayne Airport (SNA) from Portland and I'm surprised that they are very expensive and take twice as long (because of having 1 stop) as their non-stop competitors like Alaska, JetBlue (LGB instead of SNA), etc.

On the other hand, I'm looking at Southwest because they have a lot of flights, they let me check 2 bags for free, and I can cancel the flight without penalty.

SNA is not Southwest's primary airport in LA. That's LAX. They fly out of the other LA area airports, but none have as many flights as LAX.

>I'm still astonished that Southwest can pull that off

The tradeoff is avoiding the per-booking GDS distribution fees. With their homegrown reservation system, they were able to fill their planes without paying GDS fees.

They did ink a deal with Amadeus to use their GDS, but did not announce that they would make the inventory available to outsiders. I assume that means they were able to negotiate around high fees.

I do all of my business travel through our company's agency. Travel agents might not be worthwhile for most people, but they are invaluable for any company doing a high volume of travel