The world of online travel is complex with 700 million fares (updated hourly), 300 million fare rules / regulations, 50 million active availability records and 5 million schedules. The ability to find the lowest fare has traditionally been the most important performance indicator for low fare searches and that trend isn’t disappearing anytime soon. To highlight the importance of low airfare searches, Sabre recently commissioned a Low Fare Search Study (conducted by Fried & Partner) to determine which travel technology provider finds the lowest fares and the most attractive itinerary options for its customers.
The study compared Sabre, Amadeus and Travelport’s low fare search capabilities across 24 countries with the top 100 most travelled destinations per country (based on 2012 MIDT data). Listed below are some results from the global Low Fare Search study:
- Sabre finds the lowest fares 9% more often than Amadeus ($13 cheaper)
- Sabre finds the lower fares 33% more often than Travelport ($72 cheaper)
- Not only is Sabre more likely to find less expensive options, they are also more likely to find itineraries that travelers want to buy: both in terms of time of day and length of travel times
As the ways in which travelers search for travel continues to evolve, Sabre is focused on reducing the complexity of travel shopping by delivering the best airfare options around the world. Consumers want to know that they have access to the lowest fare, although they may not always buy the lowest fare. Providing our customers with options is important and Sabre is focused on providing the industry’s most advanced travel shopping and pricing services that find the best airfares available. Here are a few examples:
- Itinerary Selection – Sabre approaches flight selection differently and combines itineraries in unique new ways to produce lower fare options, while also ensuring these itineraries are still attractive to consumers – not sacrificing quality of service for lowest fare
- Diversity – Sabre deployed a new diversity model to derive broader solution sets based on convenience and cost. The algorithms are built to return the ‘right’ mix of flights. The new diversity model takes into consideration 12 different factors including carriers operating in the market, a good mix of options throughout the time of day, shorter flight times for more convenience, and the lowest fares in the market. Sabre’s customers are finding more consumer-centric low-priced, low travel time itineraries while maximizing consideration of the other diversity factors
- Optimization – Sabre is casting a wider net to consider more flight options and strengthen the availability quality to increase the opportunity for finding lower fares
Low Fare Search results