Sabre Corp. has announced the release of its new
application programming interface-driven lodging solution, which partners with online travel agencies
Booking.com, Bedsonline and Expedia Partner Solutions to add their content to
the GDS's traditional hotel listings. Travel agencies that work with Sabre will
be able to shop and book more than 1 million properties from multiple sources,
and the bookings all will be active GDS segments, which means agents can
service a single passenger name record.
The launch comes at a time when the major travel management
companies have created their own hotel distribution solutions that also incorporate
OTA content channels, but are not necessarily connected to a GDS. CWT
launched RoomIt in 2017. In March, American Express Global Business
Travel appointed Margaret Bowler, formerly of HRG, as director of global hotel
strategy to lead the development of a new GBT hotel content strategy. And
this month, BCD Travel unveiled its new
Stay by BCD product, headed by April Bridgeman, who became SVP of
hotel solutions in April.
"[Sabre] is giving options to smaller agencies that
can't build a TripSource or RoomIt-type product," said Areka
Consulting Americas managing partner Louise Miller, referring to BCD's and CWT's tools. She added that small to midsize
TMCs are the target market for the Sabre solution. "It helps smaller
agencies compete."
While the major TMCs also provide content from OTAs and
other booking channels, they bypass the GDS. A change to the booking likely
would require a small agency to work through a different channel to make the change, potentially
for a fee to the customer, since the non-GDS hotel booking isn't native to the
PNR.
Even so, Festive Road managing partner Caroline Strachan said
getting these market rates in front of travelers is critical for program
credibility, and she sees multiple benefits to having the bookings at a PNR
level: It normalizes the content so the platform can filter to the best rate or
other attribute, rather than having travelers scroll across multiple offers and
sources; it links duty of care and data flows; and it potentially sets up hotel
retailing within the GDS.
Some TMCs have their own deals with an Expedia or Booking.com
and may be using their portals to book. These agencies may not turn the rates
on in the GDS, as their "cut" of those rates is much bigger when they
go direct, Miller said. "But many are not large enough to get a deal, so
this is good for them to give traveler confidence in the managed channels. At
least 50 percent of the time, the GDS commissionable rates are the same or
better, so the TMCs end up with a booking that's commissionable in the end
anyway."
Essentially, what all these solutions are trying to do is to
get bookings into a managed channel, as leakage is still a major issue for most
companies. The movement toward new hotel solutions "improves the data for
duty of care, provides previously consumer-only rates for [comparison], and
bringing in more hotel bookings will offset the possible lost commissions,"
Miller said.
In a usability study, Sabre found that product normalization
helped agents reach a booking decision 30 percent faster. The new API
capabilities soon will be incorporated across all Sabre points of sale
including Sabre Red 360 and GetThere, and additional API enhancements will come in
2020.