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