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Amadeus hits back at Sabre comments
Sabre is continuing its attack on Amadeus, saying the GDS is including non-agency bookings in its UK statistics, but Amadeus is refuting the claim. Sabre Travel Network director for the UK, Ireland and the Nordic region, David Brown told TravelMole: “As far as the UK is concerned, Amadeus has made a lot of noise about its ambitions and its targets here. It’s hardly surprising that it is claiming great successes. But the numbers tell a different story.” “Self-reported booking figures for the UK in September, the latest we have, show Galileo at 43%, Sabre Travel Network at 21%, Worldspan at 20% and Amadeus at 16%. “We suspect, therefore, that Amadeus is including in its UK figures those bookings made by BA reservations staff in the BA CRS, which is hosted by Amadeus. Strictly speaking, though, these bookings are not agency bookings – so if this is the case it would be more creative math from Madrid.” Commenting on Sabre’s remarks, Amadeus senior marketing and communications executive, Rob Golledge told TravelMole: “We are not including airline bookings – if we did, the figure would be much higher. “We stand by our 21%, we are not cooking the books.” “In the UK market there are two GDSs that are growing and Sabre is not one of them. No-one can dispute the fact that Amadeus is the fastest growing GDS in the UK. Galileo is still in the lead and we believe we have just overtaken the other two.” Mr Golledge said Amadeus counted bookings made by agents, operators and online bookings – defined as bookings that made on Amadeus where the booking could have been made with other GDSs. He added: “There are difficulties in calculating market share bookings, we don’t believe there is one set way to count bookings which is why people think they can dispute the figures.” Sabre’s Mr Brown added: “Most of Amadeus’ growth has been driven by three customers. They acquired Gold Medal Travel last December, ebookers is growing quite well for them, as was Travel2. Those three customers amount to around 3.5 million bookings. However, they have just lost Travel2 to Galileo, so who knows where that leaves them…”
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