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June 23, 2006 - reprinted with permission from The Beat. This material is protected by copyright. Unauthorized redistribution, including email forwarding, is a violation of federal law.
TECHNOLOGY: Sabre Seeks Year-end User Platform Migration
Sabre Travel Network officials today confirmed they have told global distribution system users worldwide that by year-end they should move from the Sabre for Windows application to the MySabre Java-based interface that has been in the market for about two years.
The retirement of Sabre for Windows would save Sabre in operational, servicing and research and development expenses, said Sabre Travel Network senior vice president for North America Chris Kroeger.
"We are targeting the end of the year for our stop date, and that's a timeframe we had envisioned when we first introduced MySabre a couple years ago," said Kroeger. "We know from experience it doesn't happen overnight. We understand that some customers, particularly as we move into the larger customer segments, have unique dependencies, so we have flexibility on the stop date."
Kroeger asserted that switching to MySabre would come with no customer service expense in terms of agent productivity or speed--and would indeed enhance services and content offerings. Currently, about 50 percent of Sabre locations are using MySabre, he said, mostly leisure-oriented and smaller agencies.
For travel agents, usage of graphical user interfaces has often been seen as slower than the use of traditional GDS text-based commands or formats. The MySabre platform offers both mouse-based point-and-click tools as well as a window with traditional formats. "You need to find the right balance," said Kroeger, "We have found that right balance and have protected some of the great things like formats and productivity enhancers, while adding capabilities and making sure it all is delivered at an acceptable speed. We strive for it to be better than users are accustomed to, and that's been really hard, but we find that today ... to do 'like work' that our agencies would have done in Sabre for Windows, MySabre is almost 10 percent faster."
Both interfaces are backed by the core Sabre GDS, but while the legacy interface is a Windows application, the underlying architecture of MySabre is Web-enabled and Java-based (developed with Yahoo! Portal Builder), which means it can operate on multiple operating systems and update with a download rather than a reinstallation. It also introduces such graphical elements as maps, weather, hotel photos and potentially including non-GDS airline inventory. There also are seven languages available for MySabre, whereas Sabre for Windows supports six. All of this works within the normal broader agency workflow, including back-office integration, officials said.
Kroeger suggested users ultimately would save money on training (as newer agents adopt the point-and-click method, requiring less training on formats) and information technology support. He noted that the ability to access new products, such as travel packages, could also drive incremental revenue.
Set against the backdrop of a general transformation of distribution systems and economics, the platform transition plays a major role in Sabre's own cost-cutting agenda as the company reworks numbers to fit the emerging airline segment pricing setup related to Sabre's recently announced Efficient Access Solution.
In making that announcement on June 7, Sabre officials also described a handful of existing and upcoming enhancements related to shopping and pricing, breadth of hotel content, hotel search criteria such as as high-speed Internet access, service-fee management, security-oriented traveler data tracking, client profile integration (thanks to the acquisition of Trams) and negotiated fare management.
~ Jay Campbell
