At this time of the year, the three major global distribution systems (GDSs) report on their results for the first six months.
Amadeus said that revenue for the six months had increased by 15.1% to €2,275.5 million while income (EBITDA) had grown by 16.5% to €907.1 million.
At Sabre, half yearly revenues were $1,704.8 million, an increase of 20.3% year on year while adjusted EBITDA increased by 18.6% to $471.2 million.
Travelport, meanwhile, reported half year revenues of $1,215.2 million, 8% up on 2015. Adjusted EBITDA for the period was $293.2 million, an increase of 7% year on year.
The first thing to recognise is that running a GDS is still a nicely profitable business, with margins of between 25 and 40%.
Some of this health is down to increased air travel. Sabre reports air bookings up by 28.9% year on year to 238.1 million while Amadeus says air bookings are up 5% year on year to 279.3 million. These more than compensate for a drop of 3% in segments (to 176.8 million) reported by Travelport.
Our chart this week shows air booking market share.
The figures are those provided by Amadeus and Sabre and Travelport's have been inferred from these because Travelport reports segments as opposed to air bookings and so it is hard to make direct comparisons. Amadeus' share figure excludes bookings made by airlines on their own systems and bookings made through single country systems such as those which typically operate in China and Russia, for example.
Amadeus says its market share is up 1.0 percentage point while Sabre's has increased by 0.8 percentage points.
One other figure that is worth mentioning is the $43.9 million in customer loyalty payments (or incentives) that Travelport says it made in the first half to travel agencies, up from $42.2 million in 2015. This amounts to around 5% of net air revenues for the company.
It comes as little surprise then that GDSs' airline customer are aiming to cut their distribution costs.