I hear a lot about these, but from what I can tell they're no more than highly customised CMS's that allow content to be fed in from third parties such as hotels etc., perhaps with an online booking mechanism.
DMS just seems to be a marketing term for something a developer would be more likely to refer to as a CMS. Is this correct?
Well, wikipedia says:
“Destination Management Systems are systems that consolidate and distribute a comprehensive range of tourism products through a variety of channels and platforms, generally catering for a specific region, and supporting the activities of a destination management organisation within that region. DMS attempt to utilise a customer centric approach in order to manage and market the destination as a holistic entity, typically providing strong destination related information, real-time reservations, destination management tools and paying particular attention to supporting small and independent tourism suppliers.” Frew, A.J. and Horan, P (2007) Destination Website Effectiveness – A Delphi Study-based eMetric Approach, Proceedings of the Hospitality Information Technology Association Conference, HITA 07, Orlando, USA
One thing I really don't think it is, is a "glorified" CMS system (assuming CMS stands for Content Management System!).
Having previously worked in the corporate travel management industry, and helping to develop an "online booking system", I'd like to think I know a little about this.
For the consumer perspective, it's a relatively straightforward process when you think about it. Hotels and Airlines will syndicate their inventory, usually via a mechanism called a GDS (Global Distribution System). There are only really a few of these in the world, and the "big players" are the likes of Sabre, Worldspan, & Amadeus, although some smaller airlines and hotel chains have their own systems (usually run in conjunction with one of the "big" GDS systems!)
For the consumer, you can use an online system to book and manage your holiday (vacation). This may consist of no more than a flight (consisting of two parts - outbound and inbound to/from your destination) and a hotel at a specific destination.
For the consumer market, these systems are usually very price-centric rather than destination-centric, although destination choice is a large part of any of these systems.
Within the corporate market, though, these systems are far more destination-centric, than price-centric.
For example: You're a consultant working for MegaGlobalMega Consulting Corp., and you need to travel from London to Miami, Florida on business. A good "destination management system" will allow you to input, control and manage a complete inventory and itinerary for your journey. You'll book your flight (usually online and in real-time) to Miami. Once there, you'll need a hire car. The DMS will know where you are, and should seamlessly allow you a choice of car hire options (again, ideally in a real-time, connected scenario) to car hire companies that are local to the place where you'll be (i.e. Miami, Florida). Of course, prior to your business meeting the very next day, you want your suit dry-cleaned, so again, your fantastic DMS system will allow you to book some laundry into a local dry-cleaners). And so it goes on....
Of course, if your business meeting was in Paris (France), you'd be shown dry-cleaning options in Paris. Of course, this isn't just car hire and dry-cleaning, but will usually encompass everything either the business man (in the corporate environment) or the tourist (in the consumer environment) requires during a visit.
For the corporate market, these "management systems" are usually administered by the individual client companies (and thus the employees of those companies) that use them and will very often allow very fine-grained control and administration of corporate travel policy, which can include things like:
Maximum spend limits based upon employee "rank" and destination location. (This will vary by destination, since a hotel in Paris, France is much more expensive than the equivalent hotel in Grimsby, UK)
Alternate/forbidden locations.
In a nutshell, a Destination Management System, from a technical perspective, can be thought of as a central "hub" that reaches out to numerous suppliers and services all over the world (very often in an online, real-time manner using e.g. web services), allowing the end-user to purchase the products and utilize the services of the suppliers, which can be further refined by a corporate policy (eg preferred suppliers) within a specific "window" based upon geographic location.
Hope this helps!