SOUTHLAKE, Texas–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Feb. 7, 2006–On the second anniversary of the launch of its next generation SabreSonic Passenger Solutions suite, Sabre Airline Solutions announced that the offering reached significant milestones in 2005. Sabre Airline Solutions is the industry leader in innovative technology that helps airlines better market and sell products, serve customers and operate fleets in today’s highly competitive marketplace.
During the past year, Sabre Airline Solutions’ hosted carriers employed the SabreSonic suite to handle more than 350 million passenger boardings — successfully serving over 40 thousand passengers per hour.
The suite’s SabreSonic Inventory offering enabled carriers to manage more than 100 million inventory availability requests and book a total of $4 billion in tickets in 2005. In addition, hosted airlines used the system to complete more than 275 million check-ins, increasing passengers-boarded counts by more than 100 percent year over year.
Sabre Airline Solutions completed 353 customer activations of SabreSonic products and components during the year. The total number of airlines benefiting from the unmatched flexibility, speed, performance and cost savings delivered by SabreSonic now stands at over 100 carriers worldwide.
“The breadth of the offering from Sabre Airline Solutions provides an integrated solution across all of our operations,” said Sergey Kiryushin, chief information officer for Aeroflot. “In fact, we believe the technology solution they have packaged for Aeroflot offers benefits that are unmatched in the industry. This smart technology means improvements to our operations and that means better results to our bottom line and improved service to our customers.”
Lino Bergonzi, CEO of Air One, commented recently, “Our growth goals are aggressive, and we need an aggressive technology partner. Our business strategy is based on offering convenient and efficient service and the agreement with Sabre Airline Solutions is a key element of our strategy. The SabreSonic suite has the technology we need now and provides the flexibility we need to quickly adapt to growth and new business models in the future. This technology integrates with their decision support software to keep a keen focus on operational excellence while driving out costs and improving our revenues, all in a rapid growth environment. During the course of our evaluation, there was no other company that could provide the power of this combination.”
“The success of SabreSonic clearly demonstrates that Sabre Airline Solutions is the global leader in offering airlines integrated solutions to meet their reservations, inventory and check-in challenges,” said Gianni Marostica, Sabre Airline Solutions’ president of Airline Passenger Solutions. “Nowhere else can carriers find the full suite of passenger solutions available to them either in a Sabre-hosted environment or as stand-alone components. Sabre has invested significantly in SabreSonic — a powerful marketing, sales and service solution — to help empower carriers worldwide to cut costs, grow revenue, streamline operations and better serve their customers.”
The SabreSonic portfolio comprises several components, including SabreSonic Res, SabreSonic Inventory, SabreSonic Check-In, SabreSonic Ticket, SabreSonic Web and the Revenue Integrity suite, all of which delivered significant success for customers in 2005. Descriptions of these components and highlights of their successes include the following:
SabreSonic Res
These advanced reservations management capabilities enable an airline to efficiently grow revenue and manage every channel of distribution. This core solution comes bundled with complete customer-centric reservations, inventory and departure control functionality, as well as shopping, ticketing and code share capabilities — all managed from a single-access, easy-to-use graphical interface. Additionally, an alliance-ready package for each global airline alliance is available.
-- As of the end of 2005 over 60 airlines were using the Dynamic
Schedules tool to customize their availability and more than
30 airlines were using the code sharing capabilities.
-- More than 120 unique code share agreements have been
implemented for customers.
-- The offering now supports all major airline alliances --
oneworld, Star and Skyteam -- and contains schedules for more
than 600 airlines. There were over 350 million passenger
boardings for SabreSonic Res carriers in 2005.
-- New customers implemented during the past year included
Frontier Airlines, Aeroflot, Aerolineas del Sur, Central
Mountain Air, Euromanx, Ozjet, Afriqiyah, Ariana and Harmony.
SabreSonic Inventory
In addition to enabling advanced inventory control capabilities within the SabreSonic Res bundle, SabreSonic Inventory is also available on a stand-alone basis. This component allows airlines to execute the latest in yield-enhancing revenue management methodology using a cost-efficient, scalable solution. It processes availability requests from all distribution channels, providing true last-seat availability on an origin-destination basis. SabreSonic Inventory offers airlines the flexibility to deploy a range of inventory control methods, from basic nested controls to advanced controls such as serial, virtual and continuous nesting and customer-centric availability.
-- More than 100 million inventory availability requests and 50
million booking requests were processed through SabreSonic
Inventory in 2005.
SabreSonic Check-In
This component facilitates operational flight processing and efficient passenger processing both on and off airport grounds, streamlining operations and enhancing the customer travel experience. In addition to advanced departure control system capabilities such as re-accommodation and automated fee collection, SabreSonic Check-in includes stand-alone modules such as a CUSS-compliant self-service kiosk application, Web check-in and boarding automation. SabreSonic Check-in offers a single graphical user interface shared with SabreSonic Res that helps airlines optimize staff efficiency at the reservations office as well as at the airport.
-- Carriers using SabreSonic Check-In throughout North America,
Latin America, Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia-Pacific
successfully managed more than 275 million check-ins in 2005.
-- The offering is the single largest departure control system in
the Americas and has grown significantly in EMEA in the past
two years.
SabreSonic Web
This is a complete, fully hosted online booking system that enables airlines to most efficiently display and sell their products over the Internet to individual travelers, corporations and travel agents. SabreSonic Web supports sales of tickets on selected partner airlines and helps generate additional revenue by offering content from car and hotel providers. It supports eight languages.
-- More than $4 billion in tickets were booked through SabreSonic
Web in the last year, representing a 27 percent year-over-year
increase.
-- There were 10 new customers signed in 2005, bringing the total
customer count for online direct booking to 35.
-- The average dollar value of tickets booked through this
offering exceeds $330 million per month.
SabreSonic Ticket
This component enables accurate and responsive fulfillment of
ticketing and other sales transactions through preferred distribution
channels. State-of-the-art e-ticketing functionality eliminates the
need to build costly systems for electronic ticket distribution and
database maintenance with the additional capability to incorporate
Global Distribution System (GDS) e-ticketing, third-party ground
handling and Interline Electronic Ticketing Hub according to business
needs.
-- By December of 2005, more than 40 carriers had implemented
SabreSonic Ticket, including recent agreements signed with
Hahn Air, El Al, TAM and Jet Airways.
-- Over 30 carriers had implemented Interline Electronic
Ticketing Hub by year-end 2005.
-- As part of a recently announced partnership with IATA, this
offering is endorsed by the industry organization as a
preferred solution in its "Simplifying the Business"
initiative that targets 100 percent electronic ticketing
adoption by the end of 2007.
“The efficiencies, cost savings, ease of use and flexibility facilitated by the SabreSonic suite continue to generate a high level of customer satisfaction, new customer wins and the significant milestones reached in 2005,” said Marostica. “This is a clear testimony of the positive contribution and marketplace leadership of the solutions we have built for our customers. “
The Revenue Integrity Suite
Launched in May, 2005, the Revenue Integrity suite helps carriers optimize flight-specific revenues by improving forecasting and scheduling, matching resources to more accurate demand figures and automating and constantly monitoring reservations activity for compliance with policy across all distribution channels in a timely manner. The Revenue Integrity suite consists of three products: the Revenue Integrity module of SabreSonic Res, Sabre SmartFlow and Sabre GDS Analysis. Airlines that have implemented revenue integrity solutions typically see immediate beneficial results, producing a one percent (1%) revenue improvement.
-- Two carriers -- Estonia and ERA Aviation -- signed agreements
for the Revenue Integrity module of SabreSonic Res in the
product's first six months of availability.
-- Alitalia joined other major carriers including Air Canada and
British Airways with the purchase of SabreSonic SmartFlow, a
do-it-yourself revenue integrity toolkit typically purchased
by large carriers to configure and monitor their own revenue
integrity processes.
About Sabre Airline Solutions
Sabre Airline Solutions, a Sabre Holdings company, is the world’s largest provider of products to help airlines market, sell, serve and operate from planning to execution.
More than 200 airlines use its broad portfolio of decision-support tools to increase revenues and improve operations. More than 100 airlines rely on Sabre Airline Solutions for passenger management solutions, while a similar number have turned to the company’s consulting group for strategic, commercial and operational advice. More than 500 contracts worldwide were signed in 2004 for Sabre Airline Solutions’ leading technology solutions.
Sabre Holdings (NYSE:TSG) connects people with the world’s greatest travel possibilities by retailing travel products and providing distribution and technology solutions for the travel industry. More information about Sabre Holdings is available at http://www.sabre-holdings.com.
Sabre Airline Solutions, the Sabre Airline Solutions logo, SabreSonic, and Sabre GDS Analysis are trademarks and/or service marks of an affiliate of Sabre Holdings Corporation. All other trademarks, service marks, and trade names are the property of their respective owners.
CONTACT: Sabre Airline Solutions, Southlake
Kathryn Hayden, 682-605-2252
kathryn.hayden@sabre-holdings.com
SOURCE: Sabre Airline Solutions
