SOUTHLAKE, Texas–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Oct. 26, 2004–Sabre Travel Network, the Sabre Holdings (NYSE:TSG) business that connects travel buyers and sellers through the world’s leading global distribution system (GDS), announced today a new hotel shopping platform that provides increased value to hoteliers, travel agents and their customers worldwide.
The Sabre system is now the first GDS to offer hotel amenity information in the primary search screen, providing agencies more information earlier in the shopping process. The customizable amenities column displays seven hotel features, such as high-speed Internet access, allowing agents to more quickly match the attributes of a hotel with their customers’ needs. The new hotel shopping platform also provides hoteliers access to new user-friendly, secure, Internet-based tools to provide rate and feature updates aligned with OTA standards.
“The new hotel availability screen allows us to more efficiently handle customer requests by easily identifying hotel features in the amenity column,” said Stu Austin, senior vice president of IT, Austin Travel. “With 20 amenities to choose from, like free airport shuttle, swimming pools, and free parking, we can tailor the amenity column in the shopping screen to the unique needs of each of our customer segments.”
The new platform, based on open systems technology, improves Sabre Connected agents’ access to rich hotel property information, while enhancing their ability to shop through over 60,000 hotels in the Sabre GDS. It offers hoteliers the ability to differentiate themselves through new merchandising tools to over 53,000 agency locations in the Sabre network, and also provides them enhanced update capabilities.
The relational database technology underlying the hotel shopping platform, running in a UNIX environment, is the first step toward establishing a system that recognizes the uniqueness of individual hotels by focusing on attributes of each property. With this technology, the Sabre system provides hoteliers marketing capabilities not available via legacy systems and empowers agencies with improved search processes.
“The Sabre system allows us to easily reach multiple channels and clearly merchandise our properties’ amenities without using price as the primary tool to grow bookings,” said Audrey Sieh, senior director of E-Distribution, Carlson Hospitality Worldwide. “The enhanced GDS screen demonstrates Sabre Travel Network’s commitment to help us reach all customer segments. The added marketing capabilities allow us to more efficiently market our products to travel agents and travelers.”
John Stow, president of Sabre Travel Network said, “This new platform, a strategic investment in improving hotel shopping technology, demonstrates the value of the Sabre GDS. The features and benefits hotels offer to travelers vary widely. The new shopping system enables agents to quickly zero in on the right property, be it a luxury resort on a far-away beach, or the best value hotel for the ‘road warrior’ business traveler.”
The new shopping platform is built on an Oracle technology and Hewlett Packard hardware solution with a proven architecture to support full redundancy and fail-over capabilities. Oracle and Hewlett Packard offered the flexibility required in the highly dynamic hotel shopping environment. The system is designed to improve performance and heighten reliability, as well as allow for scalability as needed over time.
The new platform automatically enhances the GDS, bringing benefits to both hotel and agency customers of Sabre Travel Network worldwide. With future developments, the hotel platform is expected to enable enhanced hotel shopping capabilities for other Sabre Holdings businesses and technologies, including Travelocity, Travelocity Business and GetThere.
About Sabre Travel Network
Sabre Travel Network, a Sabre Holdings company, provides access to the world’s leading global distribution system (GDS) enabling agents at more than 53,000 agency locations worldwide to be travel experts. The Sabre GDS, the first system to connect the buyers and sellers of travel, today includes more than 400 airlines, approximately 60,000 hotels, 37 car rental companies, nine cruise lines, 35 railroads and 220 tour operators. Key brands of Sabre Travel Network include GetThere, the leading Web-based corporate travel reservation technology, and Jurni Network, the unique leisure travel agency consortium that enables members to sell more products from preferred travel suppliers using sophisticated market intelligence.
Sabre Holdings Corporation (NYSE:TSG) is a world leader in travel commerce, 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, Sabre Travel Network, Sabre Connected, Travelocity, Travelocity Business and GetThere 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.
Statements in this release which are not purely historical facts, including statements about the expected benefits of, or future enhancements to, the new hotels shopping platform, or other statements about anticipations, beliefs, expectations, hopes, intentions or strategies for the future, may be forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements are based upon information available to Sabre Holdings Corporation on the date this report was submitted. Sabre Holdings Corporation undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. Any forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual events or results to differ materially from the events or results described in the forward-looking statements, including risks or uncertainties related to system integrity such as potential systems failures, capacity constraints and business interruptions, and those related to the implementation and integration of new technologies. Sabre Holdings Corporation may not succeed in addressing these and other risks. Further information regarding factors that could affect our financial and other results can be found in the risk factors section of Sabre Holdings Corporation’s most recent filing on Form 10-Q with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
CONTACT: Sabre Travel Network, Southlake
Dawn Dorman, 682-605-2246
dawn.dorman@sabre-holdings.com
SOURCE: Sabre Travel Network
