GDS Explained for New Travel Agents: Amadeus, Galileo and Sabre in 2026
By Vihaan Patel (Vihaan Patel covers the intersection of travel and digital payments — Indian OTAs, airline-direct booking flows, UPI vs credit-card surcharges, RBI tokenisation rules and the booking-funnel mechanics that quietly cost (or save) you money.) · Published · Last updated · 10 min read
Amadeus, Galileo and Sabre are the three big GDS systems travel agents use to search and ticket flights. Here's what a GDS actually does, how it differs from LCC content, NDC and a B2B aggregator, and whether a new agent in India really needs one.
Quick answer
A GDS (Global Distribution System) is the central reservation pipe that lets a travel agent search live flight schedules, fares and seats from hundreds of airlines in one place and issue a ticket. The big three are Amadeus, Travelport (which runs Galileo, Apollo and Worldspan) and Sabre — together they handle the vast majority of agency air bookings worldwide. As a new agent in India, you do not have to start with a GDS: most agents begin on a B2B aggregator that already bundles GDS content plus low-cost-carrier (LCC) fares behind one login, and only take a direct GDS later when volume justifies it.
What a GDS actually is (and what it does)
Strip away the jargon and a GDS is a giant, real-time marketplace that sits between airlines and travel agents. Airlines feed their schedules, available seats and fare rules into it; agents query it and book against it. The same system handles hotels, car hire and rail too, but for most Indian flight agents it's the air content that matters.
Day to day, a GDS lets you do four things from one screen:
- Search and compare live availability and fares across many airlines at once, instead of opening each airline's site one by one.
- Build a PNR (Passenger Name Record) — the booking file that holds the passenger, the itinerary and the contact details.
- Price and ticket the booking, issuing a real e-ticket with a 13-digit number.
- Service it afterwards — reissues, date changes, refunds, queues and reporting all run through the same file.
The original three systems each grew out of an airline's own reservation engine decades ago, which is why the trade still calls a booking record a PNR. Today they're independent technology companies, and the booking world is dominated by Amadeus, Travelport and Sabre. If you want a primer on the document side, see our guide on how to issue a flight ticket as a travel agent.
The big three: Amadeus, Travelport (Galileo) and Sabre
People say "GDS" but mean one of three brands. Here's the honest lay of the land as of 2026 — the relative sizes shift, so treat shares as rough, not gospel.
| GDS | Brands / front end | Where it's strong | Notes for Indian agents |
|---|---|---|---|
| Amadeus | Selling Platform Connect, Amadeus Cytric | Europe, Asia, Middle East, Africa; widest global footprint | Very common in India; deep full-service-carrier content |
| Travelport | Galileo, Apollo, Worldspan; Smartpoint / Travelport+ | Strong hotel content; long history in India under the Galileo brand | Galileo has been a familiar name to Indian agents for years |
| Sabre | Sabre Red 360 | North America and Latin America | Used in India but less dominant than Amadeus/Galileo here |
A few things worth knowing. Travelport runs three legacy systems — Galileo, Apollo and Worldspan — under one roof, and has been folding them into a single modern platform it markets as Travelport+. In India you'll most often hear "Galileo" and "Amadeus" in the same breath. Sabre is the giant of the American market but a smaller player on Indian soil.
Don't get hung up on picking the "best" one as a beginner. The content overlaps heavily, the bigger differences are in your local NSP (the national service provider / distributor who actually signs you up), the support, and the deal on segment fees.
GDS vs LCC content vs NDC vs B2B aggregator
This is the part that confuses every new agent, so let's separate four things that often get lumped together.
- GDS content — the traditional, schedule-and-fare feed described above, mostly from full-service carriers like Air India and international airlines.
- LCC content — low-cost carriers such as IndiGo, Akasa, SpiceJet and Air India Express historically sat outside the classic GDS model and sold through their own systems. Agents reach them via direct airline APIs or through an aggregator that has plugged into those APIs. Some LCC content does flow through GDS partnerships now, but the LCC fare you see in an aggregator often comes straight from the airline, not from the GDS.
- NDC (New Distribution Capability) — an IATA-backed XML standard that lets airlines push richer, more personalised offers (branded fares, bundles, ancillaries) directly to sellers. By early 2026 NDC was handling a meaningful and growing slice of indirect airline sales, and the GDSs themselves now carry NDC content alongside their classic feed. Think of NDC as a newer language for offers, not a separate company. We cover the fare side in net fares vs published fares.
- B2B aggregator — a portal (TBO, Riya, EaseMyTrip's agent side, FlightGPT Partner and others) that stitches GDS content, LCC APIs and NDC offers together so you book everything from one login and one wallet. This is where most Indian agents actually work. Compare options in our best B2B portal guide and the TBO vs Riya vs EaseMyTrip comparison.
The mental model: a GDS is one source of inventory. An aggregator is a shop that resells many sources — including one or more GDSs — under a single roof. For a deeper take on choosing between them, read airline-direct vs B2B aggregator.
Cryptic vs graphical: how agents actually operate a GDS
There are two ways to drive a GDS, and you'll hear old-timers argue about them.
Cryptic (command-line) entries are the short typed codes the systems were built on — things like an availability entry, a sell entry, a price entry, all in terse alphanumeric strings. A fast cryptic agent is genuinely quicker than any mouse, which is why TMCs and high-volume desks still train on it. The downside is the learning curve: every entry is a small language to memorise, and each GDS has its own dialect.
Graphical (point-and-click) interfaces wrap that same engine in panels and buttons. Amadeus has Selling Platform Connect, Sabre has Sabre Red 360, and Travelport's Smartpoint gives you a hybrid screen where you can click your way through or drop into cryptic commands when you want speed. Newer agents lean graphical; the panels reduce training time and cut down on costly typos.
For a beginner the practical answer is simple: start graphical, and pick up the handful of cryptic entries you use every day as you go. You don't need to memorise a manual to issue your first ticket.
Access and cost: how you get on a GDS (and what it really costs)
You don't buy a GDS off a shelf. You sign a distribution agreement with the GDS or, more commonly in India, with its local NSP — the company that resells and supports that GDS in the market. The commercials vary a lot, so treat everything here as indicative and get a written quote before you commit.
Broadly, the cost and commitment side looks like this:
- Productivity / segment commitments. GDS deals typically expect a minimum volume of booked segments. Miss it and you can face fees; hit it and you may earn productivity incentives. As a brand-new agent with no volume, this is the part that bites.
- Setup, training and software. There's usually onboarding, some training, and the desktop software or web access to set up. Amounts vary by NSP and by how many seats you need.
- Accreditation. To issue tickets on the GDS in your own right you generally need IATA or an IATA-recognised pathway; many smaller agents work under a consolidator's accreditation instead. See IATA vs TIDS and how to get IATA accreditation in India.
- Card / BSP settlement. Ticketing money flows through BSP (the IATA settlement system) or through your consolidator, which has its own deposit and credit terms.
Because these numbers move constantly and differ per NSP, don't trust any fixed figure you read online — including indicative ranges. Ask the NSP directly and have your CA look at the contract.
Do you actually need a GDS — or is an aggregator simpler?
Here's the honest call most new Indian agents arrive at: for the first year or two, a B2B aggregator is simpler, cheaper and faster to start than a direct GDS.
Reasons agents choose an aggregator over a direct GDS early on:
- No volume commitment to clear. You're not on the hook for segment minimums you can't yet hit.
- One login for everything. Full-service GDS content and LCC fares (IndiGo, Akasa, SpiceJet, Air India Express) sit together, instead of you maintaining a separate login per airline.
- Wallet and instant ticketing. A prepaid agency wallet means you ticket instantly without setting up BSP yourself.
- Lighter learning curve. Mostly graphical, with markup, GST invoicing and reporting built in. See adding markup and commission and how agency wallets and deposits work.
You graduate to a direct GDS when your air volume is high enough to earn real incentives, when corporate clients demand specific GDS workflows or NDC fares, or when you want to own the ticketing and the BSP relationship end to end. Many established agencies run both: a direct GDS for the bread-and-butter air, plus an aggregator for LCCs, series and group fares. On the bulk-fare side, our guides to series fares and group fares explain content that often doesn't live in a GDS at all.
How FlightGPT Partner fits in
If a direct GDS feels like a lot of commitment before you've issued your first hundred tickets — it is — an aggregator is the sensible on-ramp, and FlightGPT Partner is one solid option among several. Be sure to compare it against TBO, Riya, EaseMyTrip and others on the deal and the content that matters to your patch.
FlightGPT Partner gives you one login that pulls together series fares, group fares, fixed departures and wholesale/net fares across IndiGo, Air India, Akasa and SpiceJet — so you're not juggling a separate portal per airline. It runs on a prepaid agency wallet for instant ticketing, issues GST invoices, and offers white-label options if you want to sell under your own brand. Think of it as the shop layer on top of all that airline content, not a replacement for understanding the GDS underneath.
Whichever route you pick, learn the vocabulary first. Knowing what a PNR, an NDC offer and an LCC API are will make every aggregator and every GDS demo make sense. You can browse live routes on FlightGPT routes or read more agent guides on the FlightGPT blog, and dig into airline fare structures like IndiGo fare types, Air India fare types and Akasa fare types.
GST and the money side — a quick honesty note
Whatever booking system you use, the tax treatment of your earnings is the same and it's worth getting right from day one. As of Budget 2026, an air travel agent generally charges 18% GST on their earnings/commission — not on the full fare — and the trade commonly works off a deemed value of 5% of the basic fare for domestic and 10% for international tickets. If you sell overseas tour packages, TCS on overseas tour packages is a flat 2% from 1 April 2026 (the earlier threshold slabs were removed). These rules move every year, so confirm the current position with CBIC and your CA before you price anything. We go deeper in GST and TCS on air tickets for travel agents.
Frequently asked questions
What does GDS stand for, and what is it in simple terms?
GDS stands for Global Distribution System. In plain English it's a live, real-time marketplace that connects airlines (and hotels, car hire, rail) to travel agents, so an agent can search fares and availability across many airlines at once and issue a ticket — all from one screen. Amadeus, Travelport (Galileo) and Sabre are the three big ones.
What's the difference between Amadeus, Galileo and Sabre?
They're three competing GDS companies with heavily overlapping content. Amadeus has the widest global footprint and is very common in India. Galileo is a Travelport brand (Travelport also runs Apollo and Worldspan, now consolidated under Travelport+) and has a long history with Indian agents. Sabre dominates North America but is a smaller player in India. For a beginner the local distributor, support and segment-fee deal matter more than which logo is on the screen.
Do IndiGo and other LCC fares come through the GDS?
Not in the traditional way. Low-cost carriers like IndiGo, Akasa, SpiceJet and Air India Express historically sold outside the classic GDS model, through their own systems. Agents reach them via direct airline APIs or through a B2B aggregator that has plugged into those APIs. Some LCC content does flow through GDS partnerships now, but the LCC fare you see in an aggregator often comes straight from the airline, not the GDS.
Is NDC replacing the GDS?
Not exactly — NDC is a newer XML standard for how airlines push offers, not a separate company. Airlines use it to send richer, personalised offers (branded fares, bundles, ancillaries), and the GDSs now carry NDC content alongside their classic feed. By early 2026 NDC was handling a growing share of indirect airline sales. So NDC and GDS increasingly coexist rather than one killing the other.
Do I need a GDS to start a travel agency in India?
No. Most new Indian agents start on a B2B aggregator that already bundles GDS content, LCC fares and NDC offers behind one login and a prepaid wallet, with no segment-volume commitment. You move to a direct GDS later when your air volume earns real incentives or when corporate clients demand specific GDS or NDC workflows. See our guide on how to start a travel agency in India.
How much does GDS access cost for a new agent?
It varies a lot and is set by the GDS's local distributor (NSP), so don't trust any fixed figure online. Deals typically involve a minimum segment/productivity commitment, setup and training, the software, and an accreditation pathway (IATA, TIDS or a consolidator). For a brand-new agent the volume commitment is usually the sticking point — which is why many start on an aggregator first. Get a written quote and have your CA review the contract.