[MUSIC] Now that we have covered OTAs, there are many other channels that hotels can use to distribute their rooms. This hotel distribution technology chart shows the various categories of distribution technology that exists. One of the most important of these channels is the GDS. GDS is the Global Distribution System, which was created back in the 1960s by airlines to manage flight reservations. It was used by travel agents and over time, hotels and car rentals were added to give travel agents a central place where they could book complete travels. These platforms work in a different way, in that most of them are text based and don't emphasize visuals like you'd find on OTA. Optimizing these platforms for your marketing requires a long but important process of ensuring all of the data about your hotel is entered. The room size, the amenities, the location, distance to all the main tourist attractions and airports. As location is an important qualifier for travel agents and other travel managers, ensure you have as much information entered as possible. This includes the distance between your hotel and the bigger companies around, who invariably send staff to the hotel. Optimizing for each of these channels is best done by working together with people who use the service. And who can explain their research and booking process. Similar to the seven Cs of booking, paying the travel agents their commissions is important and is best done by setting up a third party commission payment agency. That will ensure payments are done on time to avoid the hotel being blacklisted. There are many agencies that represent hotels in such channels, and while they usually do a good job, they rarely know all the details of the hotel. And it is recommended that these listings are verified for accuracy, and more importantly, for completeness. When optimizing third-party channels, as you don't control the advertising and use of those channels, unlike your own brand website. Focus on the content, spending extra time checking the content, re-reading it, working it to read well is your main job here. Put yourself in the shoes of a travel agent or a corporate travel agent and read the contents you have uploaded. Is it interesting? Do you wanna read it? Would you book that hotel? Have you added every picture possible on the platforms that accept pictures? Your best chance of being seen is great content, so do it well. Note that there are advertising options on many GDS channels that can be used, but before spending money on those make sure your hotel is well represented. To conclude, on third party channels the most important step in marketing is the content. Text, images, reviews, and location based information. The more quality content, the better you will do.