Sabre Corporation [NASDAQ:SABR]: Experts of Travel Technology

Sean Menke, President & CEO

At Sabre Labs, the world’s first travel focused innovation lab, a slew of technologies and solutions powering the next phase of travel industry are moiled out every day. A powerhouse of emerging technologies in travel for both the near-term and the future, Sabre Labs is the driving engine of Sabre[NASDAQ: SABR], a leading technology solutions provider to the $8 trillion travel industry. The travel technology giant powers nearly 400 airlines, 175,000 hotel properties, 200 tour operators, 50 rail carriers, 40 car rental outlets and 17 cruise lines. Each day millions of consumers make use of the company’s cutting edge technologies that run the travel industry. Today, Sabre plays a major role in shaping today’s travel industry with an expertise that spans airline solutions, hospitality solutions and travel network. The company offers the industry’s broadest range of technology solutions used by travel suppliers and buyers to plan, market, sell, serve, and operate their businesses. “Sabre touches almost every facet of the travel ecosystem to drive value and success for our customers,” says Sean Menke, President and CEO of Sabre. “It’s a core investment for airlines, hotels, agencies and travel management organizations alike, and Sabre has unique capabilities to help our partners grow revenue and operate more efficiently.” Sabre’s CEO, also a former customer of Sabre, brings an experience of two decades in the airline business holding executive leadership roles.

The genesis of Sabre dates back to the post WW II era, when the airline industry saw significant prosperity. The unseasoned airline industry tussled to strike a balance between airline inventory and passenger reservations as it often faced over or under bookings, passenger service issues and underutilized aircraft. A chance meeting onboard an American Airlines flight, C.R. Smith, President of American Airlines, and R. Blair Smith, a Senior Sales Representative for IBM brainstormed the idea for a data processing system to metamorphose the scenario. The conversation was followed by the two companies performing years of extensive research and development to vouchsafe the airline industry its first ever reservations automation system—‘Sabre’ or Semi-Automated Business Research Environment. The aviation industry witnessed the birth of airline automation through Sabre that proved real-time processing was a feasible and realistic solution to the passenger reservation problem.

Intuitive B2B Travel Marketplace

Sabre’s largest line of business, Travel Network processes US$120 billion of global travel spend annually by connecting airlines, hotels, rental car companies, cruise lines, destinations, and travel services to more than 425,000 travel agents and corporate travel managers worldwide. The company’s total travel solution, Sabre Red features a portfolio of capabilities and applications allowing them to design and deliver a differentiated customer experience through a simplified workflow. At the heart of Sabre Red is the Sabre travel marketplace, global distribution system, and a broad set of solutions that integrate with the GDS.

Leveraging Menke’s wealth of travel industry knowledge and expertise, Sabre has secured the position of leading global distribution system in three of its four major operating regions and revolutionized the travel industry through customized fares and ancillary products.

Travelers want more than an itinerary; they want to feel confident about their purchases and expect a trip built around choice. That’s why in addition to a superior user experience, our new sabre red workspace provides travel consultants with data insights, relevant offers and price transparency

As a configurable workspace, Sabre Red is uniquely designed for both travel consultants as well as providers to drive customer loyalty and power business performance. With the recent advancements in Sabre Red, the solution’s workflow and user friendly interface enables consultants to reduce training times to deliver more revenue at a faster pace. Travel agents can quickly gain insights into available air, hotel, and car trends and options with the help of integrated decision support tools. Sabre Red’s ability to tap into APIs and cached data while analyzing it enhances comparison shopping and pricing transparency for consultants. “Travelers want more than an itinerary; they want to feel confident about their purchases and expect a trip built around choice. That’s why in addition to a superior user experience, our new Sabre Red Workspace provides travel consultants with data insights, relevant offers and price transparency,” affirms Menke. Agents can significantly boost their revenue through cross sell and upsell capabilities, and fare management functions like mark ups, commission and overrides. With increased visibility into traveler preferences and additional revenue opportunities such as alternative airports, dates, travel seasonality, and fare trends, agents can provide customized support to travelers. Special panels in the workspace give travel consultants additional merchandising options to enrich the travelers' experiences. To further simplify the task of travel agents, Sabre Red offers products like Sabre Cruises, ClientBase, and Back Office.

Likewise, travel providers are equipped with Sabre Red’s intuitive point of sale platform to differentiate and sell products consistently with their direct channel through visual and descriptive content. The easy-to-use design leverages Sabre business intelligence tools, capitalizing on the power of rich shopping data to provide data-driven insights to increase sales and drive more revenue. Using Sabre Red Workspace, travel providers can extend brand reach in the indirect channel through a content-rich platform. Each provider can differentiate their product offerings with enhanced display of ancillaries, amenities, special equipment, and services using multi-media visual and descriptive content. Leveraging the combination of data-driven insight with intuitive design, Sabre Red Workspace uniquely positions suppliers to efficiently increase conversion and maximize revenue. As the solution supports efficient standards-based content distribution, suppliers are in a position to reduce end-to-end booking support costs. Sabre’s support extends to corporations and government travel agencies to simplify travel sourcing. They can seamlessly manage workflow with Sabre Red Workspace and build best-in-class managed travel programs.

In a compelling scenario, Adelman Travel Group, a corporate travel services company implemented the Sabre Red solution to successfully deliver on its motto—‘save clients money without sacrificing service.’ Adelman uses powerful mobile tools from Sabre to keep clients informed about their itineraries. Sabre’s corporate booking tool GetThere also plays a key role in helping Adelman collaborate with corporate travelers. “We’ve been with Sabre for over 20 years, and they’ve been an important ally in helping us improve efficiencies and service levels,” says Bob Chaiken, President and CFO at Adelman Travel.

Managing Flying, Lock, Stock, and Barrel

Alongside Travel Network, Sabre has been instrumental in offering a broad range of software and data solutions to help airlines market themselves, sell products, serve customers, and operate more efficiently. The company’s end-to-end, SaaS solutions help fulfill all operations of an airline, including marketing and planning, customer sales and service, and enterprise operations. Backed by an unmatched airline expertise, Sabre Airline Solutions empower airlines to manage every aspect from pricing strategies, onboard catering, reservations, and crew management to airport operations.

"Sabre touches almost every facet of the travel ecosystem to drive value and success for our customers"

Sabre has also tapped into revenue management system, which is an eminent factor for the success of airlines. Sabre AirVision Revenue Optimizer arms airlines with real-time data to respond to rapidly changing market conditions through actionable insights and optimized revenue. The data collected in real time can also be stored and used for historical analysis to provide insights into market and passenger behaviors. Leveraging Revenue Optimizer’s integrated approach to managing inventory with revenue management controls, airlines can easily manage the retailing and merchandising facets of their operations. “Sabre invests millions of dollars each year to make air shopping simple and enable a great shopping experience. Our strength in these areas gives our travel buyers the information and options they need to give travelers the experience they want,” says the CEO.

The AI-Powered Morrow

In keeping with the company’s theme of continuous evolution, the innovation hub at Sabre has some interesting concepts to shape the future of the travel industry. An appealing innovation is an AI-powered chatbot that Sabre has built using Microsoft’s intelligent and natural language services. These chatbots can provide travelers with the self-service solutions they want for routine requests while helping travel agencies provide personal service for more complex needs. Two of Sabre’s clients will test a white label version of the chatbot with travelers. Through the test, the companies expect to gain a better understanding of the best way to engage travelers with chatbots to solve most of the challenges that many industries face when it comes to chatbots.

Sabre is at a global position to power the next wave of technology in the travel industry and continue on its mission to foster the ‘perfect travel experience.’

- Rohit Kumar
November 23, 2018