Sabre, Amex Unveil Self-Booking Social Networking Platform

Sabre Travel Network today announced plans to launch by mid-2008 a social networking platform that delivers a communication forum for corporate travel programs, initially through American Express Business Travel. The application, called Cubeless, will reside in Sabre's GetThere online booking tool as an application module, as do its meetings and ground transportation booking applications.

Sabre has been using Cubeless internally for about six months. According to Sabre, more than 10,000 user profiles have been loaded into the system. Sabre Travel Studios, the company's emerging technology research and development team, developed the platform.

American Express in the coming months will test the platform with a small group of clients before more widescale deployment, said head of public affairs Alicia Tillman. Although Amex is using the Sabre application as a starting point, it is not the "exclusive route" to the TMC's social networking strategy nor will it solely collaborate with GetThere to deliver similar platforms through online booking tools.

Sabre Travel Studios head John Samuel in a statement said the company is developing additional capabilities that, "for example, would allow a GetThere traveler to automatically populate and share their trip information from their Cubeless profile. And this could lead to some cost savings as well, once employees know they are traveling to the same location, they can arrange to share ground transportation, for example. It really is a case of the more you use it, the more ways you find to benefit, which is at the core of Enterprise 2.0—social networking that works for business."

While the platform initially delivers a social networking environment for corporate travel programs, it also becomes "more of a play that might compete with applications that do social networking for the entire enterprise, such as ones delivered by CoreSpeed and IBM, to benefit beyond the travel program and into a space where Sabre is competing with these generalists," said TravelTech Consulting president Norm Rose, who has previewed some aspects of Cubeless.

Although the benefits of social networking have been debated in the industry for some time, some corporations have taken steps to implement social networking and blogging at various levels. Meanwhile, other travel buyers and travel management companies have had trouble justifying the expense and administration of networking platforms.

"Trying to measure the ROI on a social networking application is a challenge for all the players in the space, as it is being looked at as more of a qualitative and not a quantitative investment," Rose said.

Rose said the value of social networking in corporate travel is creating a dialogue between frequent travelers and travel managers, especially for company's traveling to emerging markets. "Most corporate travel managers think about broadcasting out," he said. "The idea of getting feedback and having the visibility to that is not yet on the radar of many travel managers, but can serve a valuable purpose of cultivating the natural tendencies of travelers wanting to talk to each other."