Sabre's GetThere Platform Migration Slows Growth

The migration of GetThere customers to its new platform is not going as well as GetThere and its Sabre parent company would like, but it is going.

GetThere transitioned nearly 50 customers to the new system, which it is calling Release 6, during the second quarter. "The remaining GetThere DirectCorporate customers will upgrade in phases through the summer and fall," said Sabre chairman and CEO Bill Hannigan. "While this is very positive news, it did slow corporate transaction growth during the quarter. As is typical with a significant next-generation upgrade, new customers have deferred implementation and some current customers have deferred their next wave of adoption programs. For corporate transactions, our aggressive pre-war forecast of about 70 percent growth now looks more like 50 percent due to the impact of the war, a slower-than-expected recovery in corporate travel and the delayed launch of Release 6."

ChevronTexaco reported "not many technical issues" in its movement to Release 6 from DirectCorporate, but then, "We had participated in their beta, so we already worked out the bugs in connectivity and settings, et cetera," said project manager for travel systems Jack Chu. "Now people can make changes online even after ticketing, and the new system offers the ability to dynamically sort your options."

GetThere expects to have migrated a couple of hundred customers to Release 6 by the end of this quarter, but some customers who currently are Sabre BTS users "have been waiting on functionality," said one GetThere source. "Our goal is to have 80 percent of BTS bookings on Release 6 by year-end."

Good news for GetThere came in the form of General Electric's decision to move from BTS to Release 6. One estimate holds that GE books half of all BTS reservations. Nevertheless, some BTS clients are less than thrilled about the new technology's performance. "We went to GetThere 6 on June 19 after migrating from BTS," said State Farm travel manager Melinda Samp. "We rolled out nationwide. We have had a lot of hang-ups. I know other companies are having similar problems. The hang time is 45 minutes to an hour when it goes to price, and people just give up. It has been a struggle."

"Release 6 is easy to use," said another source familiar with buyers' experiences. "It just doesn't work."

During the migration, GetThere also is establishing a new data center in Texas to offer additional capacity and a redundant backup.

GetThere saw 36 percent year-over-year growth in corporate transactions in the second quarter, to 2.6 million, driving 24 percent growth in corporate revenues. Overall revenue, however, fell 6.3 percent to about $12 million following the loss last year of accounts with America West and American Trans Air. Declines in supplier revenue are expected to continue for the remainder of the year as the company focuses on its core corporate business. "When we combined GetThere and BTS two-and-a-half years ago, more than 60 percent of GetThere revenues came from suppliers," said Sabre CFO Jeff Jackson. "Now it's more like 16 percent, which continues to drag down overall revenues."

Sabre expects GetThere to generate approximately 10 percent revenue growth for 2003. The average self-service adoption level for GetThere clients remained at about 20 percent in the second quarter.