Sabre Red Blog

If air merchandising is a confusing a term to you, you might find a few minutes with Kyle Moore helpful.

With more than 15 years in the industry, Kyle’s expertise spans from studying new paradigms in air shopping to observing the shopping patterns of agents and their customers. And as for that term air merchandising – Kyle puts agents at ease.

“Merchandising simply refers to the various ways that airlines are altering the way they market their products and services.  At times, they are bundling services into packages that travelers may choose to buy.  Other times, they are unbundling things that were traditionally part of the fare – such as fees for checked baggage, seat selection, meals, and many others.”

This week at THETRADESHOW in Orlando, Kyle sits on a panel to probe this very question — Airline Unbundling’s Impact on the Future of Travel Distribution – Where is it all heading

And afterward, if you’re in booth 619, you might snag some face-to-face time with him to answer your own questions about how Sabre is planning to improve the way we sell airline products and provide solutions for you to do this easily, while allowing travelers to self-serve as their travel plans become clearer.

You may have heard from Kyle before.  This year alone, he’s made an appearance at Business Travel Market, London and Guild of Travel Management Companies, China Ancillary Revenue Conference and Business Travel Show, not to mention his testimony in front of the United States Congress House Aviation Subcommittee hearing on ancillary revenue where he represented all online and traditional travel agencies, a consumer group representing travelers, and the GDS companies.

Plus, you may recognize him from a popular video on “Answers on Ancillaries” featuring Kyle here.

For more information on Kyle’s panel next week, click here.

About Kyle Moore, Vice President, IT and Consulting Services:

Kyle currently leads the Information Technology and Consulting Services team which is responsible for assisting our travel agency customers in the processes and technologies they employ to better manage their businesses.

Check out today’s announcement from the Sabre Red travel solution team below on our global release.

Global Customer Acclaim for New Sabre Red Workspace

800 Agencies in 50 Countries See Immediate Benefits following Upgrade; New Capabilities in Store for Customers

SOUTHLAKE, Texas, August 4 – Sabre Travel Network, the leading provider of high performance solutions for the travel industry, has begun its global rollout of Sabre Red Workspace, a unique new agent platform at the heart of its newly announced Sabre Red total travel solution.

Built on a future ready, open platform, the Sabre Red Workspace provides agencies with faster start up times, high performance even in low bandwidth areas, rock solid stability and quick and easy access to content, resulting in increased productivity and efficiency.

“This is an exciting week for us as we officially upgrade 800 agencies around the world to the new Sabre Red Workspace,” said Greg Webb, president of Sabre Travel Network. “The Workspace is a brand new concept, unlike any other solution in the market. It’s fast, intuitive and provides agents with quick and easy access to content, and all the tools needed to seamlessly manage a traveler’s requirements from start to finish.

“In addition, we will be rolling out newly-developed capabilities that have previously never been available to the market such as integrated mobile services, new air pricing tools to manage airline ancillary services, and sophisticated reporting and efficiency tools. I know our agency customers are excited about this and I’m confident it will result in improved performance and service for them. These are very exciting times for us,” said Webb.

See full article here.

As more customer feedback on the new Sabre Red travel solution comes rolling in, we thought we’d share it with you.

Whether you are also a pleased new Sabre Red user, or maybe you are interested and considering taking it for a test drive… or even if you are quite happy with another solution and are just curious what you *might* be missing out on… the below feedback will offer insight into why Sabre Red truly is a best-in-class travel solution.

Below highlights what one UK-based CEO had to share about his agency’s experience:

“The newly-enabled platform is quicker, more flexible and versatile and the next step, in our opinion, of our Utopian state of a one-stop-shop travel solution embracing the best of all platforms, without reliance on third party companies to deliver bespoke fixes.

This is an awesome asset to any TMC’s arsenal of service solutions. Using the Red Workspace and other Sabre Red solutions will help us enhance our service delivery quickly and more effectively, and enable us to prepare and meet the new mobile technology customer needs.”

Mick Gibbs, Chief Executive Officer
Norad Travel Management ( UK corporate and leisure travel agency )

Yesterday, Michèle McDonald from TravelMarketReport.com offered some great insights into how exactly why the word “graphical” has been a negative one to agents in the past and exactly how/why Sabre Red is different.

Anyone who uses technology at work knows that the five most frightening words in the English language are: “We are upgrading your system.” So it’s not surprising that some travel agents look upon Sabre’s plan to replace MySabre with a new platform called Sabre Red Workspace with some trepidation.

But few existing GUIs can accomplish the kind of sorting and filtering of information that an agent can perform easily on a green screen.

Check out the full article here.

• Save up to 10-20 min per transaction with Automated Exchanges, which will be integrated with our leading low fare shopping to quickly find the best exchange options coming this summer to over 20 EMEA and LAD markets in 2010, with more to come in 2011.

• Achieve 90+% touchless ticketing rates and 90 to 100% quality control compliance with our configurable and customizable process automation solutions
  

Time = money in your agency’s business, so we built Sabre Red with exactly that in mind.

Questions about these new time-saving features? Give us your most challenging ones below!