Switch (travel technology)

A switch (also called an aggregator or connectivity provider) is a digital tool that facilitates the hotel’s distribution across multiple channels. It connects to the hotel’s property management system (PMS) or central reservation system (CRS) to retrieve availability and rates data and transfer it to connected distributors (OTAs, wholesalers, GDSs, etc.).

Switch function is similar to that of channel manager (actually, switches are often seen as a type of channel managers). The main difference is that a switch retrieves information directly from the hotel’s database every time the request comes in without retaining any information.

Some popular switch providers are DHISCO (part of RateGain since 2018) and DerbySoft.