Sabre Providing Mid-Office Tool Set
Sabre Travel Network is rolling out a set of integrated mid-office tools designed to tie existing Sabre applications together and streamline travel agency workflow.
Six companies already are using the Sabre Corporate Efficiency Formula, including travel management companies and corporations from Sabre's existing client base, said Chris Kroeger, Sabre senior vice president of North America. The group of self-service component tools provides a more robust end-to-end solution that lowers per-transaction costs by funneling the transactions through existing Sabre products, such as GetThere and MySabre.
"What we think is absolutely paramount is that the TMC has their formula that gets them as efficient as possible so that they can meet the needs of the corporations," Kroeger said. "There are other agencies that have gotten only so far in a formula or don't have the sort of investment resources to take it to the next level."
Sabre in March deployed Agency Fee Manager, an automated agent tool that recognizes dynamic service fees for individual customers based on type of trip and service. The tool calculates and processes service fees with 33 eligible passenger name record elements and is compatible with Sabre Card Services, ARC or Canada bank settlement plan reporting.
"Agency Fee Manager makes sure that the service fee reflects the cost and value that is delivered to the corporation," Kroeger said.
Another addition to the formula is Ticketing Assistant v2.0, which Sabre released in the fourth quarter of 2006. The automated tool provides auto-ticketing features and an integrated interface for travel agents to manage unused tickets and configure quality control checks via integrations with Sabre Qik technology, which powers the Turbo Sabre Agent Desktop.
Sabre plans to add a traveler security and data suite in the third quarter, Kroeger said.
The tools might be best suited for agencies that exclusively use Sabre, but multi-GDS agencies that already have bought into licensed products may find switching to the Sabre tools expensive, said Steve Reynolds, vice president of technical solutions for consulting firm Management Alternatives.
"To retrain programmers would be painful, so the price would have to be very attractive," Reynolds said. "Agencies need to look at it, but also have to measure the costs of switching. They may say, even though I am a single-GDS agency today, do I really want to be one tomorrow?"
"Anytime that you have a major technology provider like Sabre investing in a service for their clients, we are going to have to look very closely at that," said Paul Metselaar, chairman and CEO of New York-based Ovation Travel Group.
Scott Booth, vice president of distribution strategies for New York-based Tzell Travel Group, said Tzell will test the ticketing assistant application soon, but will not look at the other components until they are fully deployed later this year.