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P&O Business Travel ditches Sabre for Galileo
Galileo International has won P&O Business Travel away from Sabre in a five year deal.
All four main GDS’s pitched for the P&O account which was put out to tender after the agency had been with Sabre for seven years. P&O Business Travel managing director Alan Coles said Galileo had produced the best commercial terms and was able to offer the most up to date software and programme capability.
He declined to discuss the value of the deal but said he expected improved productivity and efficiencies to flow from Galileo providing front office, mid-office and back-office services, including a centralised client profile database.
“We were quite specific in detailing our requirements to enable us to offer the best travel management prices to our customers,” Mr Coles told TravelMole. The deal involves a range of self-booking tools and better control of client profiles, he added.
Cendant-owned Galileo was chosen after an exhaustive six-month selection process by the agency, which claims annual turnover of £130 million. The switch from Sabre to Galileo will take place over the next three-four months.
Mr Coles said: “At the time seven years ago Sabre had the best solution for us, now Galileo has.” Cendant Travel Distribution Services regional director Alison Bell said: “The scale of this agreement is indicative of the way in which Galileo is taking advantage of Cendant’s overall proposition to deliver its customers truly long term benefits.”
Commeting on the decision by P&O, David Brown, Sabre Travel Network’s director for the UK, Ireland and the Nordic region, told TravelMole: “We are disappointed to be losing P&O and we will be doing everything we can to win back the business.”
He added: “Galileo is playing this up because this is the first piece of non-Cendant UK business it has ever won from Sabre Travel Network. By contrast, over the past two years we have converted nine significant businesses from Galileo, most recently the Business Travel Partnership and JTB.
Report by Phil Davies
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