Sabre event points to changing travel patterns

Travel agents and other travel industry professionals from around Scandinavia gathered in Stockholm last month (October), to hear about industry trends and the role that the online channel will play in the months and years ahead. Some 90 people attended the ‘eTrends in Travel’ event, organised by Sabre.

Technology guru and Citatgruppen executive vice president, Dan Sehlberg, spoke of growing consumer demand for products and services that suited their needs exactly. He warned that the travel industry would need to adapt to take this trend into account, and that technology had a significant role to play as an ‘enabler’ in this regard.

Sabre’s European managing director of technology, Brian Shankman, continued this theme by showing how the travel technology infrastructure of the future would support an environment where discrete, stand-alone products and groups of products would be offered to customers, according to their specific needs and requirements. He told delegates how the company was migrating from a traditional global distribution system (GDS) platform to newer, more flexible technology, while maintaining the reliability, availability and security of the traditional GDS system. He said a strong, flexible, low cost and reliable technology foundation was key to Sabre’s future.

Jeff Lavender, vice president of Travelocity Europe, gave an insight to the challenges facing the online travel booking sites in Europe. He said the market for online travel in Europe had huge potential. Dawnne Unger, Sabre’s managing director for the Nordic region, said travel agencies should be looking to diversify their revenue streams, and urged travel agencies to establish a bookable presence in the online channel.

The event also comprised a product fair, where delegates were shown how Sabre’s latest products could contribute to a travel agency’s bottom line in the new environment that the speakers had been referring to. On display were the Sabre .Res suite of online booking engines for travel agency websites, the Virtually There online itinerary and travel-shopping tool, the customisable Turbo Sabre booking platform and the company’s new product for the Swedish market, bookable ground transportation.

About Sabre Holdings Corporation

Sabre Holdings, an S&P 500 company, is the leading provider of technology, distribution and marketing services for the travel industry. Headquartered in Southlake, Texas, in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, the company has approximately 7,000 employees in 45 countries. Sabre reported 2001 revenues of $2.1 billion. Sabre owns Travelocity.com, the most popular travel site on the Web, and GetThere, the world’s leading provider of Web-based travel reservation systems for corporations and travel suppliers. Sabre is traded on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: TSG). More information about Sabre is available at http://www.sabre.com/.

Sabre har ett kontor som specifikt ansvarar för Norden. Medarbetarna vid Sabres Nordenkontor i Stockholm känner väl till behoven i den lokala marknaden och arbetar med utveckling av nya och redan existerande verktyg och tjänster med syfte att hjälpa lokala byråer och samarbetspartners att bättre hjälpa sina kunder.

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