Richard Adams, senior vice president of Bahrain-based Sabre Travel Network EMEA, the world’s leading global distribution system (GDS), spoke at the EyeForTravel distribution summit held in Dubai last week in conjunction with the Arabian Travel Market.
This was the first time that Sabre Travel Network Middle East, the recently announced joint venture between Sabre Travel Network and Gulf Air, was present at ATM as a separate company. Launched in February 2005, the new joint venture covers 11 countries in the region, replacing a marketing agreement between the two companies since 1989.
As part of the summit’s focus on distribution strategies, Adams examined the changing face of travel distribution and what travel providers, travel agencies and distribution companies need to do successfully to evolve their business models. He told delegates that the only survivors in the medium-term will be those who are prepared to accept fundamental change to the way they currently do business.
“The industry has been static for too long”, Adams told delegates. “Current ways of doing business are largely stagnant and unsustainable in the current business environment, where travellers have so many different ways to book, and travel providers are joyfully exploring a wide range of brand new distribution channels.”
The Middle East region will not escape these changes, Adams said.
He pointed to a dramatic increase in the Middle East of travel bookings made on the Internet. Although only seven percent of people in the region use the Web (half of the global average), Internet use here has grown by nearly 230 percent in the past 4 years and is predicted to grow at a rate of more than 20 percent a year through to 2008.
”Put simply, businesses in the region who don’t take note and act will face an uncertain future”, Adams said in his presentation.
Adams looked at the tools and services already available in the region that can help agents and providers reduce their costs and maximise their sales.
Some of these tools, including MySabre, Sabre Travel Network’s latest Web-based booking product that makes the entire content of the GDS available to agents from a single Internet page were on display at the company’s exhibition stand at ATM.
Sabre Travel Network Middle East offers technology services, bookable travel products and distribution services for travel agencies, corporations and travel suppliers in the region. The agreement includes a five-year contract with Sabre Airline Solutions for the SabreSonic suite of products for passenger management, as well as additional operational software and consulting services from Sabre Airline Solutions.
