In today's world, providing the best price and lowest reject rate at the time of booking is imperative for a channel to emerge successful. Hence, the success of traditional distribution channels (travel agent or airline agent) and online channels is dependent on the ability to find the lowest fare to meet customer's travel requirements and the ability to make a booking at the offered rate. 

Sabre focused its efforts on developing a shopping and pricing engine that is the best at addressing savvy travelers' needs. On average, across the world, Sabre is four times more likely to find the lowest fares versus all GDS competitors and saves travelers an average of 10% per ticket (see "Appendix 1"). We also set out to reduce development and operational costs, simplify our infrastructure, and create a flexible development environment so we could meet unique customer needs. 

We are now realizing the results of these efforts: 

... We have a more flexible development environment, enabling the use of open source tools whenever possible.
... Our applications are heavily instrumented.  
... All of our queries log performance information, and the data is collected in an instrumentation database where it is aggregated, analyzed and sent to interested parties for monitoring and quality assurance.  
... Additionally, the instrumentation data feeds real-time monitoring consoles that are viewed by operations, coverage and developers.  This helps us avoid problems, or solve them quicker, reducing mean time to recovery (MTTR).

Evolving marketplace needs (including airline deregulation, growth of online travel shopping, as well as airline ancillary offerings) demand a new generation of technology for shopping, pricing and managing fares.

The move from legacy mainframe assembler code to modern languages running open systems has reduced complexity and provided scalability.  Previously, customers received nine low-fare search results from an airfare shopping query. Today, Sabre Air generates hundreds of options, giving customers more flexibility in their decision-making. To achieve this, Sabre had to completely overhaul the way airlines, travel agents and travelers search and book flights through the use of technology.

Another major advancement has been our ability to fully automate the receipt of fares and respective rules.  In the mainframe environment, it took up to four hours to process fares from airlines (distributed to Sabre and other global distribution systems via fare vendors such as ATPCO and SITA). In Sabre Air, fares are in the system in less than one hour per cycle.  In fact, if filed directly in Sabre using Sabre MyFares, fares can now be available within 30 minutes or less of the fare submission.  In today's active travel marketplace, fares change frequently, so it is critical that our customers have access to the most competitive fares at all times.

With the full automation of fare and rule data, manual intervention is virtually eliminated, thus avoiding fare errors.  Where we used to support 15 fare rules, eight of which were automated, today we support 30 fare rules, 25 of which are automated (the remaining five are not automated anywhere in the industry). This has tremendously increased product accuracy and reduced error costs by 78%.

The broad improvement to Sabre Air brought the industry a best-in-class, end-to-end product suite that leverages open systems technology to greatly enhance shopping and pricing. A recent study conducted by independent research group Topaz International has proven that Sabre is the industry leader in finding the lowest available airfares globally, compared to all other GDS providers.

"These results validate the significant investments we have made, and will continue to make, in our air shopping and pricing systems, which sit at the heart of the differentiating capabilities we provide to our customers," said Greg Webb, chief marketing officer for Sabre Travel Network. 

"Now more than ever, travelers demand the best value for their travel spend, and this study reinforces that, at Sabre, we're making the right investments to enable our customers to deliver this kind of value."

Celine Bourgeois with Air Portugal Airlines praises the ease and efficiency of Sabre Air.  "I would like to thank the entire Sabre team for your efficiency and promptness in providing Air Portugal airlines with Sabre MyFares [a Sabre Air component]," she said.  "I find the product user-friendly and logical overall, compared to competitors' products. The near real-time fare loads into the Sabre system are extremely efficient and useful: no lead time or data transfer. I was also positively surprised by the simplicity and the efficiency of the rule categories: routing, fare creator table, security or flight application. The logic to code by rule/contract and find all categories in one place is reassuring. All we need to do is follow the instructions throughout the different screens - there is no 'puzzle' to put together like in competitors' products."

Yes

Yes

Sabre Air uses the latest technology to offer the most comprehensive, automated domestic and international pricing and shopping capability of any global distribution system worldwide.  "With increased automation and enhanced pricing, the Sabre Air suite made a significant difference in the international marketplace," said Bob Ptak, fares manager for Sabre Travel Network's Latin America Division. "It incorporated many important and highly valued features that streamline travel purchase. Users can be confident that they're finding and appropriately pricing the best flight options via the Sabre Air suite." 

Accuracy, content and efficiency are three critical components vital to fare shopping and pricing: 
 
... Accuracy
Access to the most timely, accurate and reliable airfare data, with up-to-date schedules and fares, including taxes, surcharges and rules
... Content
Full access to published, private and third-party airfares
... Efficiency
A one-stop shop to view, shop, price and ticket airfares  

With more than one billion fare combinations available in the Sabre GDS, Sabre Air prices complex itineraries quickly and accurately, offering increased pricing flexibility and efficiency. With Sabre Air, travel agents can be confident they are getting their customers the best fares as well as alternate itineraries for their trips (see "Appendix 2"). And travelers using some of the world's largest online booking websites that rely on Sabre Air benefit by easily finding the best fares available. 

In addition to finding the lowest fares, travel agents and airline reservation agents gain higher productivity and efficiency through agent-tailored shopping paths that help them find required itineraries faster. Accuracy and freshness of fares, taxes and surcharges as well as full automation of business rules support faster and fully automated itinerary pricing processes. Agents also derive significant benefits by embracing the private fares capabilities in Sabre Air, which allows both airlines and travel agencies to enter private and net fares directly into the Sabre pricing platform.

Airlines, travel agencies and travelers globally have praised the new pricing and shopping benefits of the open systems platform.

Alejandro Travel, from Caguas, Puerto Rico is thrilled with the new enhancement of Sabre Air's Bargain Finder Plus (see "Appendix 3").  "Finding low and attractive fares is critical for our business.  One of the things I like about the new enhancement is that, now, I have more options, more rapidly, and the low price I am looking for is given, allowing me to move quickly and in a competitive way in order to close a sale" explains Rafael Alejandro, owner of Alejandro Travel.

"As an example, I was searching for a fare San Juan to Los Angeles, and options with Sabre Air were $200 dollars lower, compared to popular internet sites that search for low fares. Definitely the enhancement means good news, more fares and more sales for everyone."

And Ajai Sehgal, Expedia's Senior Director of Air & GDS Technologies said, "Customers demand a diverse array of priced itineraries that include the lowest-priced options. Sabre's updated Bargain Finder Max product typically delivers four-to-five times the number of priced itineraries per query compared to what we saw with its legacy product. Sabre's diligence in upgrading its products has resulted in a better experience for our customers in the markets where we use Sabre's shopping technology."

Our research scientists have developed a unique, patent-pending dynamic scheduling algorithm that mathematically constructs several logical possibilities to fulfill each travel request and then narrows down the search to those flights that are most likely to have the lowest fares available. 

Even in today's world of computing power, it is physically impossible to compute the fares and confirm true inventory availability for every possible origination-and-destination (O&D) combination within seconds and without creating major stress on individual airlines' inventory systems.  Sabre's unique method of filtering flights is possible because of Sabre's unique self-learning engine, which literally grows smarter every time someone uses the Sabre system to request flight availability, launch a low-fare search or complete a booking. We also construct the fares (including complex tax calculations, private fares applicability and combinability rules) so that when the booking is actually made the consumer gets charged the same itinerary price they selected during the search process. 

Amazingly, all of these steps are performed in a matter of seconds through advanced technological load balancing algorithms and performance optimizations in our system.

The unparalleled capabilities of Sabre Air are available because of two key factors:

... Sabre's intense investment in research and development, mathematical models and algorithms throughout our company's 49-year history.  
... The large amount of content within Sabre's system combined with the expertise that comes from working with the most extensive community of airlines, travel agencies and online booking channels enables us to refine our technology with every transaction we process.

Sabre invests approximately $30 million annually in pricing and shopping development as part Sabre Holdings' $300M annual investment portfolio.  A team of more than 800 people support R&D, product management, development, and operations in support of Sabre Air. 

Sabre views the Sabre Air shopping and pricing engine as the heart of our distribution environment, and we will continue investing to meet changing needs of the marketplace and to provide industry leading capabilities to our large community of customers.

Performance, reliability and scalability are proven through the unprecedented usage of Sabre Air, which processes 250 million shopping, pricing and availability transactions daily, approximately 5,500 messages per second.

One of our major obstacles was building new operational skills in our data center.  For many years, we have had a mature, high-performance technology operating environment (including code builds, release management and fallbacks), which has led to speedy problem detection and resolution.  We needed to create a similar high-performance structure for our open systems technology, which was particularly challenging, given that tools and technologies did not exist to support "off-the-shelf" solutions.  Furthermore, Sabre's business transaction volumes are "off-the-charts" and, again, strain the capabilities provided by modern technology. When porting such a complex application to a new platform, getting the right mix of subject matter expertise verses technical know-how was vital to our success.

Another challenge was the complexity of managing and distributing our content data to the applications. Along with the content data, we needed to constantly work on load balancing and distribution of the service requests so we could maximize the efficient usage of hardware capacity and capability to ensure quality, reliability, availability and the accuracy necessary to effectively serve customers. 

The increased ability for travel agents and consumers to access online search tools that enable automated airfare searches called for processing of 250 million shopping, pricing and availability transactions daily, approximately 5,500 messages per second. Handling such large volumes required operations research, 24x7 competitive assessments and detailed result analysis to permit continuous tuning and improvement of the mathematical algorithm.  

On a multi-year project, balancing the dual efforts of offloading existing functionality and launching new functionality was difficult.  Competitive pressures meant we had to do both simultaneously: implement new features and capabilities while at the same time offloading functionality.  Sabre wanted to exploit new features and capabilities, in addition to the transformation of the application suite. Achieving market-driven launch schedules was critical.  Our adoption of agile development model helped us overcome this challenge.  Compared to the prior waterfall development methodology, the agile methodology allowed the teams to define development iterations focused first on the highest business value requirements while demonstrating successive, functioning value-added solutions. 

Although a significant challenge at first, much of the development work and testing was completed by teams spread across different geographical locations.  We diversified our work force by creating global development centers around the world.  Sabre has development centers in Poland, India, and across Latin America, each offering specific skills and capabilities.  Additionally, we leveraged our relationship with one of our out-source providers, NIIT Technologies, to fully automate some of the testing that had previously been performed manually.  Results were quite positive, and the distribution of work permitted the groups to optimize assignments and distribute expertise.

With global offerings, and a need to permit localization and support ancillary specialized services, Sabre also enhanced its product management and support skills to cater to a very diverse and large set of customers. 

After many decades of operating in mainframe systems, there was initial skepticism that open systems would match the reliability that we have always benefited from in mainframe. One of the key aspects for the successful development and launch of Sabre Air was obtaining executive alignment and support.  The Sabre research group worked closely with the executive team, to give them a full understanding of how evolving business needs and market pressures posed a great opportunity to pursue new technology.  The combination of market and technology research led to the agreement that we should move forward and take the next steps.

We also worked very closely with our vendors.  Proof-of-concepts and experimental approaches were necessary to full understanding and simulation and "proof metrics" on the "best ideas." These efforts led to highly collaborative working teams. These proofs also demonstrated the viability of the approaches being taken.  The consistency of such positive results helped boost and solidify confidence in Sabre Air.

Developed partially outside of the application area, the first algorithm encountered resistance from the application team.  To overcome it, the research group worked directly with the application teams and implemented some initial improvements to the algorithm.  Those improvements produced shared successes and demonstrated that we could be innovative and deliver value. 

Exceeded

Sabre has trumped all other GDS competitors in low-fare search capabilities for five years running.  A recent study conducted by independent research group Topaz International demonstrated that Sabre is the industry leader in finding the lowest available air fares compared to all other global distribution system (GDS) rivals. Even more impressive than being the world's best for the fifth year in a row, is that our technology enabled us to come out on top in all regions of the world.  

The results are compelling: Sabre finds a lower fare up to 15 times more often than any other GDS. The savings per ticket against key competitors are significant: 

... North America average savings: 12 percent per ticket or $50 USD
... Europe, Middle East and Africa average savings: 20 percent per ticket or 112 Euro
... Asia-Pacific average savings: 18 percent per ticket or $132 USD
... Latin America average savings: 17 percent per ticket or $114 USD

These results show that Sabre finds the lowest fares more often than any other GDS, and also provides greater savings than any of its rivals.

"The data from this study clearly shows that the move to open systems for shopping and pricing is delivering tangible results - the type of results that provide the differentiated service Sabre connected travel agents and their customers expect when shopping in Sabre," said Chris Kroeger, senior vice president for Global Accounts, Sabre Travel Network.

Sabre Air processes on average of 250 million transactions per day (transactions processed within the platform and externally) on behalf of our thousands of travel agency and airline customers.  

Since its implementation, Sabre has invested in continuous improvements to Sabre Air in a number of key areas, most notably:

... Release Management
All software changes adhere to a monthly release management cycle, which fosters a more stable environment and better controls the flow of changes to the customer. 
... New Features
On average, Sabre releases more than 20 new features annually for Sabre Air to keep pace with the diverse needs of our global customer base.
... Customer Support Model
Sabre has dedicated shopping and pricing experts on every continent who are dedicated to supporting specific market needs and the diverse customer usage of Sabre Air.
... Continuous Technology Improvements
Ongoing upgrades in technology to improve performance and the relentless quest for the next best algorithm.

Sabre Air is easy to use, requiring little training, allowing for faster access to the product.  To facilitate access to information, Sabre Air offers information communities where customers can access a repository of common business practice or product use information.  Documentation is available, such as product and service forms, policies, etc. Online help features, such as Format Finder, allow for quick access to information topics on formats, features or products, Quick Reference guides give agency customers a quick start or memory jog on Sabre formats or features, and a Chat and Callback feature intuitively initiates free, real-time support from one of Sabre's technical support specialists.

More than 55,000 Sabre connected travel agencies around the world now rely on Sabre Air to find the lowest fare, including the largest online booking websites in the world. Travelocity, Zuji, Expedia, GetThere and lastminute.com all use our shopping capabilities tailored for online consumer behavior.  More than 70 Sabre-hosted airlines, with total passengers boarded volume exceeding 400 million annually, use Sabre Air to support their airline reservations, 40 of which also use SabreSonic Web online booking engine powered by Sabre Air.  More than 400 global airlines distribute their product through Sabre Air, with fare content being updated every three to four hours every day, or even more frequently, if using Sabre MyFares.