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Management Q + A12345678
GILLILAND: Sabre's leadership formula is primarily based on the power of our network. That point-of-sale network includes more than 60,000 travel agency locations globally, our GetThere corporate desktop at most of the largest global corporations, more than 32 million members of Travelocity.com, and reservations technology at the world's leading travel suppliers. We distribute products and services to more than 80 million unique travelers and handle more than $80 billion in travel each year.

When we have talked about our network in the past, we have primarily focused on air travel, and certainly there are still opportunities to expand and improve airline distribution. But we can expand the service and value we deliver to customers - travel agencies, airlines and ultimately travelers. And that's what gets us excited about the future - creating additional services with adjacent revenue streams.

Our GetThere corporate reservations platform is an excellent example of this. Originally envisioned as a tool to enhance productivity and therefore to drive down costs for the corporate travel distribution channel, GetThere is increasingly leading to other areas of opportunity. These include setting up small group meetings - automating that process - and adding value to travelers and hotels in terms of time savings and lower distribution costs.

But if you think across the entire network, we have the opportunity to introduce new travel content, which has been available in the past but perhaps not packaged or merchandized to the maximum benefit of the supplier or the buyer.



 
   
 

 
 
GILLILAND: For suppliers, it's certainly all about better merchandizing their products, as I just mentioned. But we also have the opportunity to deliver a set of tools that takes advantage of our strengths in distribution and in pricing and yield management. There have been a lot of talk and few results in the expansive world of customer relationship management, or CRM.

There are some, including me, who would say that the crown jewel of CRM is the ability to take our best-in-class pricing and yield-management capabilities and marry them with our reservations capabilities and our deep knowledge of travel consumers. I believe this will deliver new value to suppliers, travel agencies and buyers in a way that no industry has seen thus far.

So it's important to continue our tradition of business-model and technology innovation, but our future success also rides upon simply applying, in new ways, the rich assets we already have in our portfolio today.
 

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