Sabre becomes leading GDS in Greece

Greek travel specialist Marine Tours has contracted to use the Sabre® global distribution system (GDS) for travel bookings. The agency specialises in the shipping sector and is one of the largest air travel consolidators in Greece, accounting for over 35 percent of all travel sales there. Its conversion will make Sabre the leading GDS in Greece, with a market share of more than 40 percent.

The agency’s offices in Athens, Thessaloniki, Patras and Heraklion, Crete, have been migrated successfully from Worldspan and Galileo. The conversion involved full training on Sabre over a two-week period for more than 50 travel consultants.

Aghis Athanassiadis, Sabre’s general manager in Greece, said Sabre’s suite of marketing tools and online booking platforms had added real value to its bid for the Marine Tours business.

“We were able to provide customised solutions for Marine Tours’ specific requirements. Importantly, we were able to show how these products could contribute to Marine Tours’ strategic direction, and how we would be able to meet their needs several years from now”, Athanassiadis said.

Marine Tours’ move to Sabre follows five other recent and significant European agency account wins by the GDS. The conversion of French agencies Club Voyages, Jancarthier and Boomerang from Amadeus has increased Sabre’s French market share by nearly two percent. In the United Kingdom, Top Flight Travel’s move from Galileo gives the company a foot in the door of the Uniglobe consortium. And in Italy Sabre has secured the business of a large Italian corporate travel management organisation.

About Sabre
Sabre is the leading provider of technology, distribution and marketing services for the travel industry. Headquartered in Southlake, located in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, the company has approximately 5,500 employees in 45 countries. Sabre reported 2001 revenues of $2.1 billion. Sabre maintains an ownership interest of approximately 70 percent in Travelocity.com (NASDAQ: TVLY), the most popular travel site on the web; and it owns GetThere, the world’s leading provider of Web-based travel reservation systems for corporations and travel suppliers. Sabre is an S&P 500 company, traded on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: TSG). More information on Sabre is available on the World Wide Web at http://www.sabre.com.
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