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Sabre broadens its reach
TTI Autumn Conference Special: Sabre Travel Network is to team up with travel agency systems provider, Vertical Group, in a bid to strengthen the product offerings of both companies.
The GDS used yesterday’s Travel Technology Initiative (TTI) Autumn Conference to announce the partnership to the industry.
The deal means that by the end of the year Sabre-enabled agents will have access to Vertical’s Magic Desktop portal. This gives agents the ability to book various tour and leisure products and will also become the point of access for Viewdata and GDS bookings.
The advantage for Magic Desktop users is the increased access to Sabre’s GDS content.
Speaking at the TTI conference yesterday, Sabre manager of leisure product marketing EMEA, Gary Howes said the company was trying to broaden its distribution channels. “We believe the agency channel is essential as well as other distribution channels. It is the breadth of distribution that is key, not just geographically, but also the differing channels like airlines and straight to consumer.”
Mr Howes also said that Sabre was putting together a group of “industry heavyweights” to act as an advisory board to the GDS in order to provide guidance on shaping its leisure strategy. He said that at this stage panel members could not be named, but that a couple of leading figures had already been signed up.
When asked whether leisure bookings were still important to GDSs, panel members from all four GDSs said it was. Galileo UK country manager Jason Clarke said: “Leisure is still growing and a healthy area that we will address and get better at.”
Report by Ginny McGrath
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