What’s less well known is that hotels can sell their rooms on Expedia.com (US) via a global distribution system (GDS), minimizing Expedia’s share of the pie.
The commissions for these so-called GDS hotel bookings are about 10%. That’s 5 to 15 percentage points lower than the typical commission for standard bookings, depending on the payment model (agency or merchant) and the level of service.
Expedia.com only sells GDS hotels whose rate and content information is powered by two systems, Worldspan, owned by Travelport, and Pegasus Solutions.