Southwest Airlines' content will go live in the Sabre global distribution system on July 26, VP of Southwest Business David Harvey announced on Wednesday during BTN's Business Travel Show America event.
The date falls on the early end of Southwest's prior guidance of the second half of 2021, as Sabre and Southwest have been working to go live as quickly as possible to get ahead of an expected business travel rebound, Sabre VP of airline sales for North America Erika Moore said in a session with Harvey during the event. "Being able to get it right through summer, so it really starts to ramp up and have everyone be ready for the ramp-up we expect in corporate travel in the third or fourth quarter was critical," Moore said.
Southwest and Sabre announced their distribution agreement, which includes full GDS participation with ARC ticketing and settlement, at the end of last year. Bookings via Amadeus and Travelport's Apollo, Worldspan and Galileo GDSs all went live last year as part of Southwest's new distribution strategy, announced in 2019.
Harvey said Southwest is making "98 to 99 percent" of its content available through the GDSs. Excluded content includes "far-out, promotional" sales that largely target leisure travelers, such as $39 fares to Hawaii, he said.
"We want to make sure all of the relevant business content is there," Harvey said during the event. "This is all of our everyday low fares and literally all of our content inside of two weeks, when the majority of our bookings come in."