Video: Exploring the benefits of offers and orders for TMCs | Episode 3

Welcome to the third episode of Explore The Future of Corporate Travel, a video series that dives into the main challenges business travel consultants are facing today and how TMC technology can address them.

While there is little doubt about the ongoing recovery of corporate travel, the industry has become more dynamic and complex than ever. To stay relevant and grow, Travel Management Companies (TMCs) need to think differently, embrace change, and innovate with new solutions and strategies. Through a series of thematic video episodes, ​Sabre’s Robbie Thomas, Senior Director of Product Strategy, and Sarah Sheppard, Senior Director of Product Management, explore the future of corporate travel with Andrew Clarke, Commercial Director of the Business Travel Association. 

In this episode, the group touches on the transformation of air retailing, and how Sabre approaches the new world of offers and orders so that TMCs can focus on unlocking the value that’s underneath. 

Watch the video below to hear their conversation or read on for the highlights. 

Interview highlights  

Andrew Clarke: Airline retailing– what’s Sabre’s vision on this? How do TMCs benefit? 

Robbie Thomas: Answer to this starts to bridge over into the offer order conversation. Everybody starts talking about offers and orders, and we get a lot of questions, not just on NDC, about how we see air retailing evolving. The fundamental question our TMC customers ask is: ‘What value am I getting from offer and from order? Why would I want to rush to this?’  

Applying the previously mentioned wake-up test I don’t think that a TMC leader or agency leader ever woke up in the morning and said, “if only I had offer and order, that would change everything, all my problems would go away.” Sabre is building out offer stores and order stores and ensuring data integrity between both, so our TMCs and agency customers can focus on unlocking the value that’s underneath that.  

Imagine, you get this new cool looking technology, a brand-new set of ingredients that nobody’s ever tasted before and great exotic recipes, and you could put those three things together and do it in a fraction of the time. That sounds pretty cool, right? I would definitely sign up for that! 

The offer-order opportunities go the same way. With the technology and ingredients in place, airlines’ content, you get access to exciting new possibilities.

New recipes: you can combine all the ingredients – , i.e. content, to make better, more compelling, and unique offers in your channel, enhancing traveler satisfaction and enabling cross selling and upselling. There’s a near-term and mid-term aspect to that from my perspective. One is the ability to start creating those tailored offers, making sure you have the content and combining it with some services that the TMC may want to add. But how Sabre is thinking mid-term, is how we make sure that our TMC customers will have the same capabilities or technology that the airlines are leaning into. They’re using offers and orders to start creating their own content or custom offers. We are working to do that from an agency perspective too, for instance to apply some truly dynamic price points using Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML).  

Finally, faster cooking is speed to market. How do we react when content suddenly moves from one place to the next? The offer-order infrastructure should help our customers get to that content faster and achieve those other goals more quickly. So of course, none of that’s happening overnight, there’s going to be a transition period. We’re here to partner with our customers to make sure that they can get through that transition and see the benefits of modern travel retailing, beyond NDC and beyond offer and order. 

REPLAY

Many thanks to the Business Travel Association for this exciting conversation.

If your TMC is looking to grow in these areas, contact us today so we can discuss how our solutions can best serve you. Learn how Sabre is creating new paths to profitability in corporate travel here.