Latest Sabre launch reflects mobilisation and consumerisation of travel

Sabre UK and Europe chief Harald Eisenacher says it is the travel technology firm’s job to mobilise the industry.

Sabre UK and Europe chief Harald Eisenacher says it is the travel technology firm’s job to mobilise the industry.

Speaking on World Travel Market’s Decision Makers TV, the EMEA senior vice president of the US-based developer and GDS identified mobile as a key trend.

He noted the continuing and growing importance of apps in the consumer market, something Sabre has developed in the business to business world with its Red App Centre.

“It’s our job to take the marketplace mobile,” Eisenacher said. “We have some part of the solution in place with TripCase and we want to make sure Sabre Red is going to go mobile.”

Sabre Red is the travel agent workspace provided to Sabre customers. Rival GDS Travelport has an iOS and Android mobile app for its travel agent customers called Mobile Agent.

Eisenacher predicted that 2013 would be the year that the Sabre Red App Centre will “break though” as a concept in the B2B travel market.

And he said the key challenge for the industry was to cope with huge back-end complexity, for instance airline ancillaries, but present that to the customer in as simple a way as possible.

“This trend towards more offerings, more bundles to sell, is going to be a huge trend. It’s going to also make things more complex.

“The biggest challenge is making complexity simple.”

As the consumerisation of travel distribution develops and mobile changes the behaviour of how customer consume information, technology will play the biggest role, said Eisenacher.

He was speaking on WTM Decision Makers TV as Sabre launches TripCase Corporate, claiming it is the first consumer app with corporate integration.

Sabre said the new product will help simplify business travel for employees and improve travel programmes for corporate.

It allows reservations to be made outside of travel programmes allowing all bookings to be managed and shared.

John Samuel, senior vice president of Sabre Traveller Solutions, said: “The consumerisation of business travel continues to put pressure on corporations to meet employees expectations for simple tools to help them shop, book and manage their business trips.

“TripCase Corporate closes the gap between the company’s need for efficiency and control, and the traveller’s desire for flexibility and choice.”