Beyond the RFP — Corporate bookings have moved. Is your distribution keeping up?
GDS is growing, the TMC landscape is shifting, and rate leakage is costing hotels more than they realize
A study published in January 2026 by HEDNA and New York University confirmed what booking data had been quietly showing for two years: GDS has overtaken hotel direct channels as the single largest source of corporate room nights. Between 2023 and 2025, corporate and business travelers steadily moved their bookings away from hotel direct and toward GDS. Those GDS bookings are also landing at higher average daily rates than direct bookings in the same segment.
For hotels that have been treating GDS as a secondary channel, that combination — more volume, higher rates — is worth stopping for.
Why GDS is growing again
The answer is less about technology and more about behavior.
Corporate travel is managed travel. When a business sends an employee to a client meeting or a conference, that trip flows through a process: a travel policy, a booking tool, often a travel management company. The traveler does not simply open a browser and book wherever looks good. They book through whatever platform their company has set up — and in most cases, that platform runs on GDS infrastructure.
That behavior is shifting closer to home. A growing number of local and regional companies — businesses that previously called the hotel directly and agreed a rate over the phone — are now asking for those agreements to be loaded into GDS so their travelers can book through their corporate travel tools. For independent hotels that built their corporate segment on direct relationships, this is a meaningful change: the same accounts, the same rates, but the booking path has moved. Hotels that are not set up on GDS risk losing that volume not to a competitor, but to a channel they simply are not present in.
The booking data reflects exactly that shift. According to D-EDGE's analysis covering 2023 to 2025, GDS hotel bookings grew by 14.3 percent over that two-year period — up 9.8 percent from 2023 to 2024, then a further 4.2 percent in early 2025. The average GDS booking value reached €412.80, and while that dipped slightly from €417.50 in 2024 due to shorter average stays, the overall revenue picture remains strong.
For hotels still treating GDS as a secondary channel, those numbers deserve attention.
The cost comparison that changes the conversation
One of the most persistent arguments against GDS has been cost. For years, GDS fees were considered expensive relative to other distribution channels — a transaction fee plus travel agent commission on top. That calculation has been reframed by what OTAs now charge. With OTA commissions regularly running between 15 and 30 percent of room revenue, GDS has gone from being the expensive option to being the second-cheapest channel a hotel has — more costly than direct, but considerably cheaper than the OTA alternative most hotels have been defaulting to.
There is also the rate question. The HEDNA–NYU research found that GDS bookings for corporate travelers consistently achieve higher average daily rates than direct bookings in the same segment. A channel that costs less than the OTA alternative and books at higher rates is not a secondary option. It is the primary one for corporate.
What this means in practice
According to Phocuswright's Travel Forward 2026 report, 63 percent of business travelers operate under a managed travel policy — and the vast majority of those bookings flow through GDS platforms. Travel agency gross bookings reached $125 billion in 2024, growing faster than the overall travel market, with projections of $134 billion by 2026. According to Skift Research's Hotel Distribution Outlook 2024, agency bookings are projected to grow 125 percent by 2030 — making it the fastest-growing segment in hotel distribution. Hotels that are not properly set up on GDS, or that have let their GDS content go out of date, are invisible to a large portion of that demand before the conversation even starts.
Hotels with fully optimized GDS content see booking conversion rates improve by 25 to 30 percent, according to Sabre. That is not a marginal gain. It is the difference between appearing in a travel manager's shortlist and not appearing at all.
Optimization means more than simply being listed. A hotel can be present on GDS and still be losing a significant share of the revenue it should be capturing. Rate leakage — bookings lost or underpriced due to loading errors, rate mismatches, or content gaps the hotel is often unaware of — is one of the most common and least visible problems in GDS distribution. Première Advisory Group finds that in typical GDS audits, 5 to 10 percent of bookings are being lost to exactly these kinds of errors.
You don't need a corporate program to benefit
The data makes that case more literally than most hoteliers expect. According to Amadeus, 65 percent of GDS hotel bookings are made on public rates. A hotel without a single negotiated corporate account still has access to the majority of GDS booking volume simply by being listed with accurate, optimized content. The RFP program matters, but it is not a prerequisite for GDS to perform. For independent hotels that have stayed off GDS on the assumption that it is only relevant once you have corporate agreements in place, that assumption is wrong — and it is costing them bookings.
The new TMC layer
GDS is the foundation of corporate distribution. But the booking landscape around it has grown more complex, and a GDS presence alone no longer guarantees full visibility across the corporate segment.
At the enterprise end, large traditional TMCs like Amex GBT — the world's largest following its acquisition of CWT — remain primarily GDS-dependent. Hotels properly set up on GDS are visible to those programs. That covers a substantial share of global managed travel volume.
The picture is different in the SME and mid-market segment, where tech-first platforms like Navan and Perk (formerly TravelPerk) have added a layer on top of GDS that also pulls hotel inventory from OTA feeds and direct API connections simultaneously. A hotel that is only on GDS will have gaps in those searches. A hotel that is only on OTAs will be invisible to traditional managed travel programs entirely.
GDS is not optional for corporate distribution. But for full coverage across both the enterprise and mid-market segments, OTA presence is also necessary — not as an alternative to GDS, but as a complement to it.
The distribution work behind the rate strategy
Most independent hotels still think about distribution one channel at a time — a GDS decision, an OTA decision, a direct booking decision. The corporate segment does not work that way. A travel manager sourcing hotels for a managed program, a business traveler booking through Navan, and a road warrior booking a public rate through a travel agent are all using different platforms, different interfaces, and different content sources. The hotel that captures all three is not doing three different things. It is running one coherent distribution strategy with consistent rates, complete content, and no gaps in coverage.
That is the complete picture for corporate distribution in 2026: GDS as the primary channel, OTA presence as the necessary complement, and rate integrity as the foundation that makes both perform. Hotels that have all three in place are not just better distributed — they are structurally better positioned for every RFP season, every managed travel negotiation, and every traveler booking on a public rate.
Next in this series: The new TMC stack — how Navan, Perk, and Amex GBT are redrawing corporate booking
by Markus Busch, Editor/Publisher Hospitality.today
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