Sabre Corp. adjusted its full-year 2025 projections for
global distribution system industry volume growth for full-year 2025 from
"flat to nominal" to "down 1 percent to 2 percent" year
over year, according to Sabre president and CEO Kurt Ekert during the company's
first-quarter earnings call earlier this month.
"That's really an EDIFACT measurement, which, as you
know, is over time a relatively smaller piece of the addressable market that
we're going after," Ekert said when asked by an analyst whether New
Distribution Capability was included in that declining projection.
"When you look at NDC, there's not full transparency on
NDC share across the industry," Ekert said. "Then, two, what we're
launching in Q3... the Sabre Air Connect platform... is part of multi-source,
which is the addition of long-tail [low-cost carrier] volumes that we have not
played in traditionally, that's separate as well. … So, the negative 1 percent
to 2 percent is an apples-to-apples comparison largely of EDIFACT
traffic."
He also said that accounted for macroeconomic headwinds
coming into focus for travel. “This update incorporates recent airline traffic
softness and planned airline capacity adjustments,” he said.
Overall, however, Sabre expects double-digit air
distribution growth for its own business year over year accounting for the
implementation of its “new agency wins” and the “rollout of Air Connect,”
according to a company spokesperson.
When asked about that negative projection during its own
first-quarter earnings call a few days later and what its EDIFACT volumes were,
Amadeus president of the travel unit Decius Valmorbida said that Amadeus'
position in the market versus its competitor "is different in terms of
exposure to the U.S. market, that right now the U.S. market is the one that's
suffering most. That's our view of how our numbers have behaved in this quarter
and how it's going to behave moving forward."
Valmorbida added that Asia was growing nicely and that the
European airlines expect to maintain capacity for the summer. "Look, we
are watching like everyone else what's going to happen, but we're not seeing at
least on our numbers, we are still projecting growth into what is our
addressable market. I will say it this way," he said.