Sabre says it might not charge agents for GDS use

Sabre will not necessarily charge agents to use its system, a spokesman has told TravelMole. As previously reported by TravelMole there has been widespread speculation – most recently at the Advantage Business Travel Conference in Dublin – that charges were on the way as suppliers pressurised the GDSs to bring their fees down or risk being side-stepped. And according to a report in this week’s TTG , both Amadeus and Galileo are set to start charging agents fees. A Sabre spokesman told TravelMole: “From our perspective it is not the case that we are bound to follow suit.” He pointed out that there were ways of bringing savings to suppliers without passing the burden on to agents. But commenting on the related issue of agency incentive payments, the Sabre spokesman said that action would have to be taken to “flatten the curve” of continually rising payments, which the spokesman claimed was the GDS firm’s “largest single expense line.”