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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.
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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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