[cosgrove]

Interestingly absent is a discussion about bots abusing these booking systems. GDS' usually have a look-to-book ratio threshold with their airline customers. If the airline (via end users and bots on its website) does too many computationally intensive searches without booking a flight, that airline pays overages per their contract with the GDS.

You can imagine how a third party entity would make constant searches for seat and flight availability, spurred by all the possible permutations of airports and flight schedules. This flurry of activity rockets up the number of "looks" to the number of actual "books".

These third parties might be Online Travel Agencies trying to get around their own contractual limits with the GDS, or it might be companies that sell the schedule and fare data as competitive intelligence.

For now, the GDS' and airlines try to solve the problem with anti-bot solutions to keep contractual overages low.

If someone could instead solve the underlying structural problem (computational intensity? cost of compute? cost of running a GDS? offer free fare and schedule data to all?), they could probably crack open a multi-million dollar market opportunity.