Travel agents want the same rate everywhere. They book the offer nobody else has.

In a survey of 756 travel agents, 94% call GDS rate parity highly important. Their strongest reason to book an advertised hotel is a GDS-only offer. Two rates give them both.

by Markus Busch

It's the second call of the morning. The flights to Lisbon are booked. The client wants three nights near the office and a fourth for herself, and the agent has the hotel screen open. The next two minutes decide whether your property gets the booking. A new survey asked 756 agents what happens in those two minutes.

Who answered

Amadeus, Sabre and Travelport commissioned the study together. Takedown Research ran it between April and June 2026, and Amadeus wrote the report. Every figure below is theirs, from the three companies that sell GDS access and GDS advertising. Results were weighted so the Americas, Europe, the Middle East and Africa and Asia-Pacific count equally. The report doesn't say how the agents were recruited.

These are terminal agents. They log in more than six times a day and spend close to eight hours in the system. That is a real slice of the channel, and a minority one: Amadeus said earlier this year that about 15% of its GDS bookings come through the terminal. The rest arrives through booking tools wired directly into the system. What follows is how the person at the screen decides.

Asked how their use of each reservation channel has changed over two years, 43% said they use the GDS more and 24% less. The hotel's own website came out slightly behind, 31% more against 36% less. Calls to the hotel or its reservations office: 29% against 38%. That's agents describing their habits to the companies that run the system. It isn't booking data.

One rate to trust, one to book

Of the agents surveyed, 94% call GDS rate parity highly important, and 63% say they book away from a hotel when its rates don't match across the places they shop. A GDS rate above the one on Booking.com doesn't lose you one booking; it teaches the agent to skip you. She doesn't know whether the gap came from you, a wholesaler, or an OTA discount. She sees a higher number on her screen and a lower one in the next tab.

Then the same survey names the strongest reason to book a hotel the agent sees advertised. An exclusive GDS-only offer, at 57%. Nothing else comes close. Verified parity follows at 36%.

Read quickly, those two answers pull against each other. They describe two rates. BAR has to match everywhere, because it's the number the agent checks. The offer she books on is a second rate: a GDS-only package, priced on its own. Booking.com carries nothing to compare it with, so it has nothing to be out of parity with.

The report shows what that package should hold: 73% of agents prefer offers built on the best available rate with free inclusions. Asked which free inclusion they value most, agents put breakfast first (27%), then Wi-Fi (19%), an airport shuttle (17%) and a room upgrade (13%).

A revenue manager can build it this week. Room and breakfast, or room and the airport transfer, priced as its own rate and loaded only to the GDS. BAR sits on the line above it, matching the OTA to the cent. The agent gets her proof and her reason to book on the same screen. Read your OTA contracts before you load it, because some parity clauses reach packages too.

The word that sells is commission

The report tested which words in hotel ads make agents act. "Commission" came first, at 53%, and 54% in the Americas. "Deal/discount" followed at 47%, then "free breakfast" at 44%.

People paid on commission respond to the word commission. What matters is where that leaves the recommendation. The client asks for a good hotel near the office. The agent has four that fit. The one that plainly pays her is the easiest to pick.

Every hotel loading GDS rates sets a commission. Few put it anywhere an agent will read it. Four nights at $300, at 10%, puts 120 in the agent's pocket. Tell her. Say so in the rate description and in the property description the agent opens before booking. Almost nine in ten agents say they regularly read the description fields.

The brand arrives before the agent does

Nine in ten agents say clients ask for a hotel brand by name. Almost as many, 92%, attach the traveler's loyalty number when they book, and 49% say loyalty steers where the booking goes. A third search by chain code to jump straight to the brands their clients want. In the Americas it's 39%.

For a chain, most of the selling is done before the agent opens the hotel search. The client said the name. The loyalty field is waiting to be filled. No field on the screen says the independent down the street would suit this client better.

An independent has to make its case inside the listing. The photos, which nine in ten agents call highly important in ads. The breakfast and the shuttle, spelled out. The walk to the office, in minutes. And the property ID in any ad you run, so the agent can book without a second search. Of the agents surveyed, 91% call that vital.

The AI writes the email. The agent picks the hotel.

More than half of agents use ChatGPT, Gemini or Copilot at work, mostly for research and for writing to clients. In the Americas, 35% use no AI tools at all.

When the survey asked what would make agents likelier to book an advertised property, "a clear, AI-generated comparison" scored 20%. "None of the above" scored the same. Just under half, 47%, think AI could improve hotel recommendations someday. For now the chatbot drafts the note to the client, and the agent chooses the room.

The report tells hotels to get their content ready for AI-assisted selling. The agents' answers say what the pick rests on today. A rate that matches. An inclusion that doesn't. A commission she can see. A listing complete enough to book from without picking up the phone.

A hotel controls all four this week, with no new vendor and no ad budget.

Read also: The GDS books your best guest. You just think it's not for you. · The GDS isn't dying. It's becoming the backbone of AI distribution

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