Sabre to Showcase Innovative Solutions for Travel and Hospitality at ITB Berlin Expo

Software and technology provider Sabre will showcase its cutting-edge solutions for the travel and hospitality industry in two major spaces at the ITB Berlin tourism expo.

With the slogan “Open for Change”, the ITB Berlin expo will open its doors as an in-person event on Tuesday, March 7, for the first time as a pure B2B event.

Prior to the show’s opening, Frank Trampert, senior vice president and global head of Sabre Hospitality, and Salman Syed, vice president of Sabre Travel EMEA, highlight how the Covid pandemic has accelerated a transformation in traveler expectations that was already underway.

Sabre Hospitality develops software and services for hotels, while Sabre Travel Solutions focuses on travel distribution and technology solutions for airlines and travel agencies.

Sabre will be present at ITB Berlin with two trade fair booths, one dedicated to its airline IT and travel distribution business, the other focused on hospitality IT.

Focus on personalization

Photo source: Sabre

According to the two executives, consumers expect high levels of personalization in their travel experiences, and companies that innovate and can disrupt the market will be the winners when it comes to attracting and keeping their customers satisfied.

Despite this, many travel companies have yet to fully embrace personalization, with only a small number offering truly customized offerings to their customers.

Personalization and automation have been a priority for Sabre and with its hospitality and travel products the company promises to simplify the complex task of personalizing billions of options available to each customer.

Frank Trampert says that in its early days, the Sabre Hospitality team was more product-focused than it is today, but that in recent years Sabre Hospitality Solutions has invested in the development of a dedicated services platform.

“This allows us, as market needs arise, to grow organically to meet those specific needs, adding them to an already consolidated platform. This was exemplified through our recent acquisition of Nuvola, which is a task management and operations optimization software. We are now able to integrate these functionalities and add more features and attributes to the hotels. These investments were made to enable easy scaling and to offer a high level of configurability to Sabre’s customers,” Trampert said.

This is how Sabre’s SynXis Retail Studio came about in mid-2022, allowing hoteliers to focus on increasing revenue by increasing retail options.

“For hotels, in order to use the central reservation system (CRS), a room reservation was usually required before any other services could be sold. With Retail Studio, we can offer any type of service without having to have a room. The inventory platform, as in the retail space, can essentially handle an unlimited number of products, or SKU (stock keeping unit) to offer a flexible and personalized experience to hotel customers,” Trampert said.

AI-based technology helps improve travel experienceSabre Travel Solutions is also committed to personalization. Sabre Travel AI was developed in partnership between Sabre and Google, with the goal through machine learning and business and marketing intelligence, to enables airlines and other travel businesses to deliver the right offer at the right time across all their sales channels.

Sabre Travel’s Salman Syed said: “When it comes to improving the travel experience and increasing revenue for travel agents at the same time, it is crucial to collect and use traveler journey data. But this can be a difficult and costly task. That’s why Sabre partnered with Google to create AI-based technology that learns from consumer behavior to redefine travel companies’ resale and customer service strategies. That’s how we’re creating cost-effective solutions that are smarter and faster.”

Sabre at ITB Berlin 2023

At ITB, both Sabre’s Hospitality Solutions and Travel Solutions sectors will confirm that travelers place high demands on the quality of their travel process.

According to Sabre, travelers expect a seamless and agile process that allows them to fulfill their plans without interruption. For travel agencies, the ability to offer excellent customer service will depend on their ability to process large amounts of information, while the hotel industry has the possibility of not relying only on its rooms for its commercial success, but to open an even larger market with all its ancillary services.

Later this week at ITB Berlin, Sabre Travel will share information about its Content Services for Lodging (CSL), a multi-source, API-agnostic, API-driven lodging distribution platform; Sabre Vacations, a next-generation leisure travel solution developed in partnership with travel technology company Peakwork, which will be launched initially in Germany, soon to be followed by Austria and Switzerland; and its developments in Virtual Payments, as in 2022 Sabre acquired Conferma Pay, a global fintech company specializing in payments technology, which signed an agreement with Mastercard to accelerate the use of virtual cards for business-to-business (B2B) travel payments.

Sabre Travel Solutions can be found in hall 5.1, booth 106 at the ITB expo.

While Sabre Hospitality will showcase – in addition to SynXis Retail Studio – Cloud, a hotel service optimization and guest engagement software that enables professionals to connect their teams and elevate services, acquired by Sabre in 2022.

Sabre Hospitality can be found in hall 9, booth 207 at ITB.