How GDS Commission Shares Impact Hotel and Agency Revenue

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It’s 5:59 a.m. on a rainy Monday in Chicago. A corporate traveler scans her company’s booking tool, hits “book,” and locks in a room at an upscale hotel in Auckland. That single click unleashes the Global Distribution System (GDS): reservation messages, credit‑card authorizations, and once the guest checks out, a commission to the travel management company (TMC) that facilitated the sale. 

Multiply that chain by hundreds of millions of transactions, and you begin to see why the GDS agency model remains one of hospitality’s most durable revenue engines.

Roughly 200 million hotel bookings flow through the three big GDS networks (Amadeus, Sabre, Travelport) every year, primarily from corporate travel. Corporate travel, and by extension, GDS channels, continue to be critical in the hotel booking ecosystem at a time when hotel companies are clinging to stable, predictable revenue streams. 

GDS Commissions in the Booking Universe: A One‑Slide Crash Course

Hotel demand splits into two macro buckets. Direct bookings flow through brand.com, voice/central‑reservation lines, and walk‑ins. Indirect bookings spread across online travel agencies (OTAs), wholesale, group blocks, and the GDS. Within GDS, two commercial models dominate:

• Agency / Post‑Pay: The hotel gets paid after the stay and owes a commission to the TMC.
• Merchant / Net: The hotel is paid a wholesale rate, and the TMC then upsells the room to travelers to earn a margin on the markup.

According to Skift Research data, global hotel bookings from these two models represented about 25% of global gross hotel bookings revenue in 2024. This article zeros in on the Agency/Post-Pay model because it generates commissionable revenue, or GDS Commission Share.

GDS Commission Share: A Global Perspective

According to OnyxInsights data, hotels paid an estimated $2.1 billion in commissions to TMCs through the GDS networks in 2024. However, GDS commission share, which represents the share of total hotel commissions incurred by GDS bookings, is unevenly distributed. Understanding gaps can lead to competitive advantages for players in the hotel bookings game. 

Region by Region: How GDS Commissions Differ

• North America (5% GDS commission share) has spent decades wiring corporate travel programs into back‑office systems. Deep links between TMCs, payment providers, and hotel CRS platforms keep agency bookings fast and relatively cheap.

• Europe (4.3%) enjoys dense cross‑border business and stringent duty‑of‑care rules, pushing travelers into managed channels. Yet, powerful direct booking campaigns from hotel companies limit GDS growth.

• Asia‑Pacific (4% and climbing) currently lags but has significant momentum. Multinational companies are scaling hubs in Singapore, Sydney, and Bangalore; local TMCs are modernizing; and card adoption is broadening, together fueling the steepest year‑over‑year gains globally.

Country by Country: Where GDS Commissions Carry Higher Shares 

• New Zealand (11% GDS commission share) and Australia (10.5%) top the league table, powered by resource‑sector compliance, lengthy domestic flight sectors, and dominant regional TMCs.

• The United States (5.1%) tracks just above the global mean of 4.8%, representing the tug‑of‑war between enormous corporate demand and loyalty‑fueled direct‑booking campaigns.

• Belgium (4.4%) shows how mid‑size economies can under‑index when large corporations negotiate static, direct deals with preferred chains, sidestepping the GDS entirely.

How Room Class Drives GDS Commission Share

• Luxury and upper‑upscale hotels capture 6% to 7% of stays via GDS because they sit at the epicenter of managed‑travel itineraries: meeting space, negotiated last‑room‑available clauses, and premium loyalty tiers. 

• Midscale and economy properties earn less than 3% GDS commission share. Their price‑sensitive guests flock to OTAs, metasearch sites, and air‑hotel bundles. Chain scale magnifies the gap: mega‑brands amortize connectivity costs and lock in global preferred suppliers, while independents shoulder higher fees or skip the channel altogether.

Why GDS Commission Share Matters 

Why do these slight differences matter, if agency/post-pay GDS commissions comprise only about 5% of global hotel commissions? 

Indeed, hotels more broadly have been making efforts to migrate to direct-heavy distribution strategies since the dawn of the internet age, and Skift Research expects those efforts to intensify in the next several years, according to the “Hotel Distribution Outlook 2024.” 

However, Skift Research also estimated in the report that agency bookings are expected to grow 125% by 2030. With every percentage point in GDS commission share representing millions of dollars, there’s a significant amount of money on the table for hotels and agencies.

Part 2: GDS Commission Implications at the Property Level

Region, country, and hotel class explain only part of the variance in GDS commission share. The next Data Snap, coming out in July, will zoom into the property level — branded vs. independents, location, hotel persona — and show how hotels are turning hidden white space into high‑margin bookings. Stay tuned.

“The Data Snap” is a recurring article series that paints a clearer picture of the dynamic hotel booking landscape, empowering hotels and agencies to make data-driven decisions that help them build productive partner relationships and drive more revenue.

OnyxInsights offers a comprehensive view of the industry landscape, enabling hotels and TMCs to make well-informed decisions and better serve their clients and partners. Onyx CenterSource processes over 100 million transactions annually on behalf of 200,000 agencies and 150,000 hotels globally, representing nearly $2.1 billion in hotel commission payments. Visit onyxcentersource.com to learn more.

This content was created collaboratively by Onyx CenterSource and Skift’s branded content studio, SkiftX.