Amadeus wins Travelbag from Sabre

Sunday, 23 Jun, 2004 0

Amadeus has poached Travelbag, the ebooker-owned longhaul agent, from Sabre.

The brand has switched to Amadeus to fall in line with its parent company, which now uses Amadeus as its primary GDS for distribution business in the UK, France, Spain, Benelux, Germany, Scandinavia, Finland, Austria and Ireland.

Ebookers chairman and founder Dinesh Dhamija said the company opted for Amadeus because of its faring products and access to the fares of European airlines. He said: “Amadeus is a key part of our GDS strategy and has shown its ability to support our demanding transaction volumes.”

The win has led Amadeus to claim that it is the leading GDS technology provider for UK online agents. Other online agents that are signed up to Amadeus include lastminute.com, Airline Network, Gold Medal (which has an agent’s website) and Opodo. It also powers ba.com and flybmi.com.

Commenting on the loss, Sabre Travel Networks managing director, David Brown said: “We’re obviously disappointed to be losing the Travelbag business, but we can fully understand ebookers’ need to bring its new acquisition’s technology into line with the rest of the ebookers business.“

He added: “On a separate note, we plan to disclose early next week details of some more of the 16 (originally announced as 14) travel agencies that signed up to the Sabre system recently, in the largest single group of conversions that we have ever seen in the UK.” – David Brown, managing director

Amadeus director multinational customer group, Gillian Gibson, said: “This decision by ebookers puts Amadeus in a strong position to achieve its aim of being the second largest GDS in the UK market by the end of 2004.”

Ebookers bought Travelbag in February as part of its strategy to focus on the mid and longhaul market.

Report by Ginny McGrath

Ginny McGrath

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