--- title: "ONDA is revolutionizing Korea's hospitality industry." description: "T Port's GDS platform connects Korean properties to 20+ booking channels without separate contracts. Real-time sync, unified reservation management, and automated rate updates—solving the overbooking chaos most owners avoid." published: 2019-10-06T00:00:00+00:00 author: "ONDA 편집팀" category: "Insights" image: "https://zqcfqfqgiyckyhazcfrk.supabase.co/storage/v1/object/public/blog-images/webflow/6316f3f75130788ec2d762dd/65a9e1253cb24e55c3c4544a_62e7678369c3f326bec82cc7_5e9428985f867817826567dd_vol34_onda_cover.jpeg" canonical: https://global.onda.me/en/blog?slug=ondaneun-gugnae-sugbageobeul-hyeogsinhaneun-hoesaibnida locale: en --- # ONDA is revolutionizing Korea's hospitality industry. ![vol34_onda_cover](https://zqcfqfqgiyckyhazcfrk.supabase.co/storage/v1/object/public/blog-images/webflow/6316f3f75130788ec2d762dd/65a9e1253cb24e55c3c4544a_62e7678369c3f326bec82cc7_5e9428985f867817826567dd_vol34_onda_cover.jpeg) ### 02. We build IT solutions tailored to small and mid-sized properties. **Writer: ONDA Planner Cho Young-soo** **Editor: ONDA Manager So Mo-ra** Hello. I'm Damon, head of ONDA's Growth Division. Last month in Magazine ON, we briefly covered ONDA's origin story and business scope. You remember, right? T Port—the company behind ONDA—was founded by hospitality veterans who deeply understand the pain points of property owners. We use technology to deliver custom solutions. Today, I want to get specific about what ONDA actually does. What technology powers our platform? What features do we offer? Where can you use them? Let's walk through how we solve real problems. ### **First solution** #### **_With ONDA, you can sell on 20+ platforms without signing separate contracts._** As we mentioned last month, expanding to more sales channels usually means meeting with each platform's account manager, negotiating contracts, uploading listings, and then—every time your rates change—manually updating each site. You also have to log in to each platform to check reservations and manage inventory. Sounds tedious and complicated, right? In fact, many property owners avoid multi-channel distribution entirely because of this hassle. We've heard countless stories of overbookings and reservation chaos. **ONDA solves all of this in one go.** To tackle this problem, we built a **GDS platform**. Probably a new term for you—because we're the first in Korea's hospitality space to use it. GDS is actually an airline industry term: it stands for Global Distribution System, a tech platform that distributes flight inventory. > Airlines' flight schedules → GDS (Global Distribution System) platform → Travel agencies In simpler terms: each airline's inventory flows into the GDS, which aggregates and distributes it to travel agencies—all in real time via technology. Our **hospitality GDS platform** works the same way. By connecting ONDA to major domestic and international platforms, you can sell, manage, and settle payments for your property—simply and cleanly. List on the 20+ platforms below without signing individual contracts. Reservations from all those sites flow into ONDA's reservation management system automatically. No more logging in to each site. No more overbookings. ![](https://zqcfqfqgiyckyhazcfrk.supabase.co/storage/v1/object/public/blog-images/webflow/6316f3f75130788ec2d762dd/65a8b24e0b586168e5286c45_62e7678369c3f398c9c82cc8_5e942897961046d7367f2d84_vol33_onda_03_2.png) With ONDA, you can sell on 20+ platforms without signing separate contracts. You can also freely adjust rates and inventory by channel. Payouts from all platforms are consolidated and wired every Friday, making cash flow planning much easier. Most people aren't familiar with GDS, so we just call it **"sales distribution"**. Simple as that! ### **Second solution** **We provide a Booking Engine so guests can book directly from your site.** Selling through platforms means paying commissions. Naturally, as a property owner, you'd rather sell direct. That's why you build a website and run social media channels. But without a reservation system, what happens? Every inquiry comes by phone. You burn time and energy on calls—time you should spend managing your property, cleaning rooms, hosting guests, and marketing. ONDA includes a **Booking Engine** (real-time reservation widget) alongside the GDS platform. It's essential for owners who want to boost direct bookings. ONDA's booking widget can be embedded across various social channels—blogs, Instagram, you name it. You don't even need a full website to accept reservations. ![](https://zqcfqfqgiyckyhazcfrk.supabase.co/storage/v1/object/public/blog-images/webflow/6316f3f75130788ec2d762dd/65a8b24e0b586168e5286c3d_62e7678369c3f309dbc82cd5_5e942898f70fbb992d0fcafb_vol33_onda_04.png) We provide a Booking Engine so guests can book directly from your site. ### **Third solution** **Ditch Excel and paper notebooks. ONDA has full PMS functionality.** Once your sales stabilize, the next priority is visibility: you need to see everything happening in your property from check-in to check-out. Global hotels have long used PMS software for this. PMS stands for Property Management System—a system to manage property operations. Hotel PMS products are feature-heavy because hotels run complex operations. They're bulky, expensive, and require upfront installation fees plus monthly subscriptions. But for small and mid-sized properties, hotel PMS is overkill. If you don't run F&B outlets or a large-scale operation, those features are hard to learn and rarely used. So ONDA PMS was designed to be lightweight and perfectly suited to small property owners. We interviewed countless hospitality operators to understand their pain points around property management, reservations, and software. We iterated repeatedly, stripping out every unnecessary feature and keeping only what matters. And we're still updating it. Plus, if you use our sales distribution (GDS) service, PMS is free! ![screenshot](https://zqcfqfqgiyckyhazcfrk.supabase.co/storage/v1/object/public/blog-images/webflow/6316f3f75130788ec2d762dd/65a8b24e0b586168e5286c4e_62e7678369c3f33ed8c82cc9_5e9428975f867844a16567db_e18489e185b3e1848fe185b3e18485e185b5e186abe18489e185a3e186ba-2019-10-11-e1848be185a9e18492e185ae-8.10.17.png) You might be curious about the △ mark next to "Yanolja" in the pension category. Yanolja PMS doesn't support multi-channel reservation management. It's optimized only for managing bookings from Yanolja's own sales network. Since it lacks central management functionality, we marked it with △. In the guesthouse category, eZee is an international PMS recently acquired by Yanolja. While also used by hotels, we've categorized it here under guesthouse. The motel category has a question mark (?). The dominant software in Korea's motel market isn't PMS—it's RMS. The major players—Serial, Garam, Micronic, Seung-eun (Serial and Garam were acquired by Yanolja)—all offer RMS. RMS stands for Room Management System. Its core function is **room operations**. RMS integrates hardware and software to enable real-time room status monitoring, in-room controls (temperature, lighting, power, etc.). Think of the plastic key card you get at check-in: it stores guest info, assigns the room, and activates in-room systems when inserted. That's RMS at work. Motels—where online bookings are less common, lead times are short, and turnover is high—mostly rely on RMS as their main system. Larger hotels often integrate RMS with their PMS. ### Now, let's look at ONDA's products. ### **1) ONDA Plus (PMS tailored to pensions)** Pensions rely heavily on seasonal pricing (off-season, shoulder season, peak season) and prefer simple, intuitive UIs. Rate changes need to be easy. Auto-discounts, date-range settings, and functions like block/close-out dates should be one-click simple. ONDA Plus delivers all that via a PC interface and Android/iOS apps, so you can manage your property on the go—no need to be desk-bound. Currently used by 2,400+ properties. ![screenshot](https://zqcfqfqgiyckyhazcfrk.supabase.co/storage/v1/object/public/blog-images/webflow/6316f3f75130788ec2d762dd/65a8b24e0b586168e5286c31_62e7678369c3f3f9eac82cca_5e942897b499e57b99df2dc8_e18489e185b3e1848fe185b3e18485e185b5e186abe18489e185a3e186ba-2019-10-11-e1848be185a9e18492e185ae-8.11.42.png) ### **2) ONDA Wave (PMS tailored to guesthouses, B&Bs, hostels)** Guesthouses, B&Bs, and hostels serve international guests, long-stay customers, and operate dormitory rooms. They need a chart-based UI that shows guest stay periods at a glance and allows easy reservation moves. They also rely heavily on bookings from international platforms like Booking.com, Expedia, Agoda, and Airbnb—so integration with these channels is essential. That's where our channel manager (explained below) comes in. With it, you can easily manage reservations from global OTAs. ONDA Wave delivers all this and is currently used by 500+ properties worldwide. ![screenshot](https://zqcfqfqgiyckyhazcfrk.supabase.co/storage/v1/object/public/blog-images/webflow/6316f3f75130788ec2d762dd/65a8b24e0b586168e5286c57_62e7678369c3f3b471c82ccf_5e942897459693194975ae03_e18489e185b3e1848fe185b3e18485e185b5e186abe18489e185a3e186ba-2019-10-11-e1848be185a9e18492e185ae-8.11.50.png) ### **3) ONDA Star (PMS tailored to 1–3 star hotels)** Industry hotel PMS typically includes: guest management, reservations, stay management, billing, post-paid accounts, close-out procedures, F&B outlets, banquet management, procurement, payroll, and interfaces (POS, credit card, room controls). We stripped out the bloat and kept only the essentials small hotels need. ONDA Star includes close-out management (for shift handovers), interfaces (POS, card systems, RMS), guest management, and reporting—everything a hotel needs to run smoothly. No upfront installation fee. Free to use! ![screenshot](https://zqcfqfqgiyckyhazcfrk.supabase.co/storage/v1/object/public/blog-images/webflow/6316f3f75130788ec2d762dd/65a8b24e0b586168e5286c3a_62e7678369c3f3306cc82cd0_5e94289963900006d3d8a3b7_e18489e185b3e1848fe185b3e18485e185b5e186abe18489e185a3e186ba-2019-10-11-e1848be185a9e18492e185ae-8.14.15.png) ### **4) Channel Manager (CMS)** CMS stands for Channel Management System—commonly called a "channel manager." To sell on international OTAs, property owners traditionally have to sign contracts with Booking.com, Expedia, Agoda, Airbnb, etc., and manage rates and inventory separately on each platform. But unlike domestic OTAs, international platforms open APIs that allow you to manage rates/inventory without logging into their extranet dashboards. By integrating these APIs with PMS, you can control all your channels from one place. A channel manager is the system that connects your PMS to sales channels and syncs your reservation data. With a channel manager built into your PMS, you can adjust rates and inventory without logging into each platform. **ONDA has a built-in CMS**—that's our key differentiator. We're currently building a new, significantly more stable CMS system, launching by year-end. Major CMS players in Korea include ONDA, Sanha, Myallocator, and TL-Lincoln. Interesting side note: channel manager adoption rates are 94% in Australia, 82% in Japan—but only 23% in Korea. Huge opportunity ahead! ![screenshot](https://zqcfqfqgiyckyhazcfrk.supabase.co/storage/v1/object/public/blog-images/webflow/6316f3f75130788ec2d762dd/65a8b24e0b586168e5286c35_62e7678369c3f3d9cec82cd2_5e9428996390001df2d8a3b8_e18489e185b3e1848fe185b3e18485e185b5e186abe18489e185a3e186ba-2019-10-11-e1848be185a9e18492e185ae-8.14.21.png) ### **5) Sales Distribution Service (GDS)** Now let's dig into our technology. We mentioned that ONDA users can sell on 20+ platforms via our GDS. But here's a question: **why do these platforms buy inventory from us?** They'd make higher margins by contracting properties directly. Why go through a middleman? Two reasons: First: **labor cost savings**. If platforms managed every property directly, they'd need large account management teams. By sourcing inventory from ONDA GDS, they eliminate that overhead. Second: **scale**. ONDA GDS distributes most of Korea's online accommodation inventory. Connecting to ONDA gives platforms instant access to 20,000+ properties. ONDA GDS currently sources inventory from 40+ suppliers and distributes to 20+ sales platforms. Each platform has a different data format, but we connect them all via API and centrally sync content, rates, inventory, and reservations. The most critical factor in a GDS platform? **Stability**. Systems like this handle massive, simultaneous data flows. ONDA GDS has connected 60+ platforms without a single failure for two years straight. ![screenshot](https://zqcfqfqgiyckyhazcfrk.supabase.co/storage/v1/object/public/blog-images/webflow/6316f3f75130788ec2d762dd/65a8b24e0b586168e5286c41_62e7678369c3f3c94dc82cd1_5e94289906600f7a05dc6a8b_e18489e185b3e1848fe185b3e18485e185b5e186abe18489e185a3e186ba-2019-10-11-e1848be185a9e18492e185ae-8.13.57.png) ### **6) ONDA Easysell (Extranet)** If you look closely at the diagram above, you'll see ❸ ONDA Extranet. We call this software **ONDA Easysell**. Travel professionals know that small B2B travel agencies buy hotel inventory at below-market rates through strong relationships, then resell it with a markup. But they face the same problem: to resell that inventory, they have to manually upload and manage listings across every sales platform. There's a ton of invisible manual work in the B2B hospitality market. That's why we built an extranet system for small travel agencies. Upload your inventory to ONDA Easysell, and it syncs in real time with 20+ platforms. When a booking comes in, you get an email and fax notification. We also support **white-label** services, so agencies can brand the software as their own. Currently used by 750+ hotels and resorts. ![screenshot](https://zqcfqfqgiyckyhazcfrk.supabase.co/storage/v1/object/public/blog-images/webflow/6316f3f75130788ec2d762dd/65a8b24e0b586168e5286c4a_62e7678369c3f30ba3c82cd3_5e94289af70fbba5ab0fcb53_e18489e185b3e1848fe185b3e18485e185b5e186abe18489e185a3e186ba-2019-10-11-e1848be185a9e18492e185ae-8.14.04-2.png) ### **7) Nationwide Property Standardization (META Search)** A project we're wrapping up: ONDA is building the foundation for **price comparison systems** like HotelsCombined through **nationwide property standardization**. We've aggregated 180,000 listings into a single database, normalized them to our standards, and extracted 24,000 unique properties. We then standardized their property and room data, and mapped it back to the original 180,000 listings. Properties open and close every day, but ONDA continuously maintains this dataset. --- That's three years of ONDA's journey in a nutshell. We're not a B2C brand, so we don't get much public visibility—but T Port and ONDA have world-class technology and think obsessively about how to empower small and mid-sized properties with the right tools. We're also working on a few secret projects for our next leap—but a little mystery keeps things interesting, so I'll stop here. ONDA has a bold vision and a great culture. We're always hiring developers. If you're interested, send your resume to [recruit@onda.me](mailto:recruit@onda.me). For business partnerships, leave a message at [https://onda.me/affiliate](https://onda.me/affiliate) and our team will get back to you. **One More Thing!** ONDA publishes a monthly magazine for small property owners—the one you're reading right now! Hotels have structured training programs and plenty of public resources, but small properties often struggle to find practical guidance. That's why ONDA has been publishing **MAGAZINE ON** every month for nearly three years. It's free, but packed with quality content: owner interviews, operational tips, market trends, marketing insights, labor law advice, interior design ideas, photography tips, and more. If you're a small property operator (or just curious), subscribe and keep reading! ![screenshot](https://zqcfqfqgiyckyhazcfrk.supabase.co/storage/v1/object/public/blog-images/webflow/6316f3f75130788ec2d762dd/65a8b24e0b586168e5286c52_62e7678369c3f34c73c82cd4_5e94289a459693dfc275ae09_e18489e185b3e1848fe185b3e18485e185b5e186abe18489e185a3e186ba-2019-10-11-e1848be185a9e18492e185ae-8.12.12.png) Thanks for reading this long post. I hope it gave you a clearer picture of what ONDA is and what T Port does. Thank you. \[Series Index\] [2019.09 What does IT tailored to small properties actually look like?](https://onda.me/magazine/33/post/2561) **2019.10 A deep dive into ONDA's product suite** ## [View full magazine >>](http://bit.ly/magazineon34) ## [Subscribe to the magazine >>](http://bit.ly/magazinesub)