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