Ai Editorial: Sabre’s way of dealing with inconsistency in air travel distribution
First published on 11th July, 2016
Ai Editorial: Sabre is counting on its scale for innovation as the group continues to power apps, sites, reservation systems etc., writes Ai’s Ritesh Gupta
The way airlines sell is evolving, and this is ruffling the status quo.
Clearly airlines are re-looking at their IT infrastructure as well as association with intermediaries in order to gain desired control over what they sell. How viable is a direct connect agreement? What sort of investment would NDC require? Cutting down on GDS distribution cost or even doing away with it? These and many more issues are being dealt with.
Be it for consistency in selling across direct and indirect channels, or understanding a traveller’s intent, context, loyalty or even cost control, airlines are seeking change. Carriers are now focusing on a new messaging standard NDC, doing away with inflexible platforms that require a lot of development / programming to facilitate every change, looking at attaining cost-benefit balance while going for personalisation etc.
Sabre – banking on scale for innovation
Since airlines work with technology vendors and distribution specialists, a big question then is: how are B2B travel conglomerates responding to the evolving needs?
For one, Sabre is ready to bring on change with its software, data, mobile and distribution solutions. The group asserts that its scale enables the team to innovate across the entire travel lifecycle. Sabre processes more than 1.1 trillion system messages every year.
We interacted with Kathy Morgan, Director of Transportation Product Solutions, Sabre Travel Network about how the group is playing their part today:
· Collaborating for emerging distribution technology capabilities: A prime example of this is NDC connectivity to the Sabre GDS, as American Airlines worked on GDS integration to Sabre using the NDC-style API late last year. We are already seeing that usage of NDC -XML by airlines and GDSs will vary in its shape and form, resulting in a mix of EDIFACT and XML connectivity. “Evolution in technology standards is nothing new, nor is the use of XML technology standards in the air distribution business. But I would say that usage is on the rise,” said Morgan. Sabre has been utilizing a variety of technology standards, including a mix of XML and EDIFACT standards, for a long time. “And we’ve actually developed our platform to have the flexibility to manage the new ways that new technologies are allowing content to be sourced and distributed.” Morgan pointed out that going forward, the biggest challenge will be ensuring interoperability between the various industry standards during this evolution period – to ensure consistency in access to products and services across airlines and channels.
· Consistency in distribution: Morgan asserts that suppliers can count on improved consistency across channels – whether it’s branded fares and ancillaries or personalised offers and integration of rich, visual and descriptive content. “We can support it utilising a wide array of technology standards provided by entities such as ATPCO, IATA, and OpenTravel”. So for Sabre, the biggest development in indirect distribution that exemplifies how the GDS is enabling airlines to differentiate their offerings is the evolution of Sabre Red workspace travel agency platform, to include enhanced merchandising capabilities for suppliers.
“(The new flexible content sourcing platform) enables airlines to distribute their products in new and different ways, ensuring the indirect channel has access to the full breadth of content an airline wants to distribute and differentiate,” says Morgan. The offering features advanced merchandising capabilities including enhanced product information delivery via images, video etc. “It would enable airlines, hotels and other travel providers to leverage the Sabre travel marketplace for an omni-channel marketing strategy.” Morgan added that the graphically-rich workflow supports ancillary and branded fares sales (and enhanced hotel capabilities).
· Unique value: Sabre states there are several ways in which the group delivers unique value to airlines. “Through our APIs and Sabre-developed points of sale, we extend the reach of the airline to customers not easily accessible to them in their direct channel – such as managed corporate travellers and buyers outside of their home market,” says Morgan. “(Also, by using insights around the business processes and workflow of users in this channel) we can drive up sales of their premium products to increase revenues.” As distribution specialists, they state that GDS remains the most efficient, neutral and cost-effective distribution channel to reach travel agencies, not just for seats, but also effective retailing.
· Availability of ancillary or bundled products: It is pointed out that ancillary or bundled products are not readily available when shopping through most travel agencies or corporate booking tools – creating an unnecessary discrepancy and lost opportunity for both the airline. Morgan said the bundling and unbundling of products and services drives complexity in the air shopping and booking process. “At Sabre we’ve made ancillary and branded fare content available through all points of sale that we develop, from the Sabre Red Workspace agency booking platform to GetThere, our corporate online booking tool. Currently, 72 percent of bookable air content in Sabre offers an ancillary and/or branded fare, a significantly larger number than other GDSs. This more advanced level of merchandising capability is also built into our APIs, which are used by developers to build or update a customized booking applications for their websites or to use Sabre content within another application,” explained Morgan.
Morgan also mentioned that air ancillaries and branded fares are relatively early in their lifecycle and take time for adoption to grow. However, the industry is witnessing progress in this area. “Using March y-o-y comparisons as an example, growth of ancillary sales in the direct channel was 87.9 percent while growth in the indirect channel was almost twice that at 174.5 percent,” shared Morgan.
· Industry standards: Morgan said Sabre is a strong advocate for industry technology standards as the group believes they are the backbone of travel commerce and enable the broad and rapid deployment of products and services in the most efficient and cost effective manner. “We are also a major contributor to industry technology standards through participation and collaboration with industry bodies such as IATA, ATPCO, ARC and OpenTravel,” said Morgan. “Having said this, not all airlines choose to participate in and utilize the same standards. Sabre also needs to support standards for all suppliers of content – including hotel, car, rail and cruise content for example. While a base level of standardization is valuable, there is always going to need to be some level of customization.”
NDC Certification
Morgan says NDC Certification is a formality – it is not required for Sabre to develop and deploy NDC-based solutions. “Sabre was the first GDS to launch American Airlines’ premium and paid seats capabilities (Preferred and Main Cabin Extra Seats) based on the NDC standard, making these ancillaries available to travel agents earlier this year,” emphasized Morgan.
“Additionally, from an airline IT perspective, our Dynamic Retailer solution will be available to all distribution channels via the NDC XML standard. This solution enables airlines to join customer data (such as trip history and tier status) with their fare and ancillary catalog to generate flight, branded fare, and ancillary bundles and discounts that are both relevant and personalized to the individual traveller,” added the executive.
Sabre is in the process of certifying both their GDS and IT solutions using NDC standards.
Hear from experts about the latest trends in air travel distribution at the upcoming 3rd Mega Event Asia-Pacific, to be held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (23 Aug - 24 Aug 2016).
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