Sabre Betas Self Booking

<H1>Sabre Betas Self Booking </H1><H3>by Cheryl Rosen</H3>Dallas - Sabre this month will begin rolling out an early beta version of its Business Travel Solutions automated booking product to a select group of "early adopters," and will move on to a wider beta test by July. If all goes well, a full rollout of Sabre's long-awaited modular travel booking-through-expense-reporting system (<I>BTN</I>, July 31, 1995) will hit the corporate market in September.

Sabre president Jeff Katz said the group comprises "a wide range of customers-not just American companies by any stretch, and not just companies that currently use Sabre as their primary CRS."

The test includes companies "with a wide-ranging set of business principles and multiple technology platforms, so we can wring out a lot of angles on how people will use the product," he added.

Katz declined to name the participating travel managers, saying, "The point of beta testing is to work through issues, and that isn't any fun, so we'd like to keep it a little private at this point."

Also not yet set is the pricing model under which BTS will be marketed-that is, whether it will be offered as a software package that corporations purchase outright, or run on a transaction-fee basis where companies pay per ticket booked. Sabre is doing pricing validation now and will have that ready by the end of May, Katz said. "We will begin talking price when we're in full beta," he said. "I'd rather not talk about it until we have a little more confidence in the pricing model and the price points."

One thing is for sure, though: The system will be marketed through travel agencies, as originally planned.

"We are absolutely still looking at the travel agency channel as a means of distribution for the system," Katz said. "All the corporate research we have says that agencies are in the loop, and our model is that agencies must be integrated in.