Anyone following the developments on distribution in the US in recent months will know just how complicated a subject it is.
Yet as well as being the most complex issue in business travel at the moment, it is also probably the most vital one.Getting your goods to market is essential. No one wants yesterday's flight or last night's hotel room any more than they want yesterday's papers.
Ask any travel manager or travel management executive and they are likely to reply that full access to all inventories is the thing they most want.
John Caldwell, president of the Washington-based Caldwell Associates and a highly respected industry veteran, did as good as job as possible at the National Business Travel Association's think tank in London last week in, in defining the complexities in straightforward terms.
Airlines have to get their inventory to the buyers and the GDS system was a "simple but high cost one."
There were high fees for the suppliers but no real alternatives. In return all airlines got a fair showing on the GDSs' screens. That was the old world.
What has stirred the pot in America and brought about the jockeying for position is de-regulation of the GDSs in 2004. In the new world, there is now no obligation to screen various airline inventories fairly.
But GDSs with their fees remain, in Mr Caldwell's words, "the last high cost distribution charges facing airlines." Like commissions, they seem determined to get rid of them.
Hence the extraordinary stand off between American Airlines and Sabre in which the airline threatened to charge non-preferred channels i.e. GDSs with which it did not have a deal, a $3.50 per segment booking fee.
AA and Sabre have since signed a deal, as have most US carriers with the major GDSs. But if as is likely they are paying less to the GDSs, these in turn will be looking to increase their charges or reduce their pay backs to the TMCs.
Unless the TMCS are willing to absorb these extra charges, they will shift them onto to their customers, the corporates. Carlson Wagonlit Travel is already doing this in the States.
Mr Caldwell made two ominous predictions at the NBTA conference: that the revolution in distribution is only just beginning and that the "peace" between the airlines and the GDSs will only last a few months.
In a conversation with BTE later, Mr Caldwell said he thought GDSs would be de-regulated in Europe by the end of 2007 and that what was happening in America would probably come here.
It is not something the continent should be looking forward to.
However there is one indication that it may not be as disruptive as it has been in the States. In America most content goes through the GDSs. Tom DePascale, vp travel management services for Concur Technologies, also speaking at the NBTA conference, said only 50% of content went through the GDSs in Europe.
Many low cost carriers, like easyJet, an airline well used by business travellers, do not use the GDS system. Thousands of hotels are also not on the GDSs.
But airlines in Europe will see de-regulation as a chance to reduce further their fees to the GDS. (BA, for one, has been complaining about their high fees for years) and a host of other distribution channels, like the GNEs, the airline websites and internet sites like travelsupermarket.com will also see it as an opportunity to make their play.
Corporates are stuck in the middle of this and don't have much say.
One nightmare, which Mr Caldwell outlined, is that they have a deal with an airline but it is one which does not put its inventory on the GDS they use.
What they want is full access and that goes not just for the airlines on the GDS but also to the ones outside of it and also to the trains where they are an alternative to flying.
Keith Mullineaux, EMEA travel manager for General Electric, again speaking at the NBTA conference, said he could see no advantage to corporates in de-regulation.
He disarmingly added: "We have a single GDS globally and if we did not get access to full content we would have to look to Plan B but at the moment we don't have a Plan B."
It may be necessary for corporates to start drawing one up.