We hit the jackpot on the second day of STX 2019 in Las Vegas as we continued to dive into more than 200 sessions and “rich” networking events to accelerate innovation in travel. Here are some of the key takeaways from Day 2. 1. SynXis Intelligent Retailing was unveiled and will offer hoteliers unlimited retailing and revenue opportunities. New innovations in retail, distribution and fulfillment are happening all over Sabre. Proof positive: SynXis Intelligent Retailing, which was unveiled during a packed lunch general session and demonstrated by sales engineer Jeff Henley of Sabre Hospitality Solutions. [SynXis Video] It holds the potential to revolutionize retailing through machine-learning algorithms that build and distribute personalized offers to guests, ensuring improved conversions. Benefits and features include:
  • Attribute based pricing/shopping:  Instead of selling a whole room at a set price – the old way – hoteliers can now unbundle the room into a collection of attributes.
  • Intelligently built offers: With the inventory of every feature, amenity, service, space, event, or experience in the system, machine learning will build and push offers around them; hoteliers don’t have to set up every offer manually.
  • Selling high-margin ancillaries:  Hoteliers can transform their business model dramatically –from being room-reservation based to selling any feature, amenity, service, space, event, or experience accessible at and near their properties. Hoteliers can also distribute room as well as non-room retail offers, whether owned by hotels or third-parties, across channels.
2. Sabre Travel Network’s Sabre Red 360 and new ways to partner with buyers and suppliers are the perfect recipe for success. Wade Jones, president, Sabre Travel Network, took the stage to present the perfect recipe for travel-industry success. Travelers expect a great end-to-end experience; convenience, value-priced, easy-to-use, but most of all personalized. STX attendees heard about the many accomplishments that are delivering value for our partners, on both the buyer’s side and supplier’s side, from Content Services for Lodging, Sabre Red 360, Beyond NDC, and Next Gen Storefront. Wade also shared how personalized retailing starts with intelligent merchandising. “Our content strategy is comprehensive: remove barriers for our supplier partners to give us content the way they want, and ensure our agency partners can see that content, exactly as suppliers want them to.” Regardless of topic, STX attendees were also sure to find a slide on Sabre Red 360 in nearly every session.  It’s the travel consultant’s access point to the Sabre platform and our rendition of API content in full view. Consultants also saw firsthand the working code for Content Services for Lodging and New Distribution Capability in their agency track sessions. They got the first rights to sign up for the global pilot of Sabre Red Web – the online access portal to Sabre Red 360. Missed out on these sessions? Attendees can head to booths 15, 42 and 76 in The Exchange today to get their own personal demonstration, or visit www.sabrered360.com. 3. Our Labs team is working with customers to create the travel technologies of tomorrow today. During the lunch session, Joe DiFonzo, CIO, and Sundar Narasimhan, president of Sabre Labs, also took center stage and shared a humorous moment with the audience, explaining that their luggage had gotten mixed up with luggage for a bowling convention in town. But they also revealed how serious our tech leaders are about seizing opportunities to partner with our customers. They explored how next-generation technology can help partners overcome challenges, better serve travelers and unlock new sources of revenue. Sundar discussed how his team is applying machine learning to help our customers increase revenue, provide a seamless customer experience and equip their agents with state-of-the-art tools. The Labs team also let attendees experience some of these technologies in The Exchange, from  an AI-enabled multi-calendar, to a use case for the blockchain and more. These technologies are increasingly relevant in business. According to one estimate, artificial intelligence, virtual reality and machine learning will contribute $15.7 trillion to the global economy by 2030​. 4. Adopting “intelligent technology” is a smart move for airlines. Rodrigo Celis, SVP of Commercial Solutions, presented on “intelligent technology” to airlines and discussed what it means for the industry. During an airline general session, he demoed one of our Commercial Platform solutions, Digital Workspace, which is a consumer-grade user interface designed to help airport and reservation agents efficiently check-in passengers, upgrade ancillaries, and provide more personalized services. He then continued to discuss Sabre’s investment in making “solutions across the Commercial Platform more intelligent.” Digital Workspace is just one of the many intelligent solutions that make up the Commercial Platform. Learn more about our intelligent solutions here: http://bit.ly/2KrmZnl.
5. We’re investing in technologies that are bringing new products to market faster.
In a separate session, Joe DiFonzo, Dave Moore and Louis Selincourt detailed Sabre’s progress of moving applications to our expanding global hybrid cloud network, which gives users faster responses, dynamic capacity, always-on service and global availability. The innovators also explained how our technological developments make it possible for us to deliver the highest quality products for our partners in the shortest amount of time. Partnering together, we will unleash a new personalized travel marketplace as Sabre’s technologists deliver the platform to run our next-generation retailing, distribution and fulfillment solutions.
STX