Sabre has unveiled its airline storefront technology, enabling agents to compare fares and other products and services from carriers.
The technology is available via Sabre’s shopping APIs enabling users and developers to create their own storefront and display fares according to their customer needs.
It is also available to a limited number of Sabre-connected agencies now through the Sabre Red 360 agency desktop solution and there will be a full launch to all agencies in the next few months.
Further down the road the technology will be available in the GetThere corporate booking tool.
Sabre is claiming an industry first with the launch and Kathy Morgan, vice president of offer sourcing at Sabre Travel Solutions, describes the development as “truly transformational for the industry.”
“It really addresses a lot of the opportunities that we see as we think about the way content and air content has become more complex. We’re really focused on how do we simplify that and how do we drive the richest, shopping experience and the ability for crisp, comparison shopping.”
Morgan adds that the airline storefront also “lays the foundation for personalized shopping.”
The storefront enables “shelves” to be created using various attributes, such as exchange and refund criteria, to enable comparison of fares and bundles.
A big element of the technology is the product normalization that goes on in the background to drive the storefront and present the offers.
Morgan says that personalization has been a focus for Sabre for some time and that the airline storefront feeds into the long-term vision of a platform for personalized travel.
She adds that rising consumer expectations mean offers need to be highly relevant to them.
“It’s becoming increasingly possible for businesses across industries, largely due to advancements in data analytics that allow us to leverage structured and unstructured data as well as cloud solutions and machine learning capabilities.”
Airlines have wanted this kind of technology for some time as it enables them to display their fares and what's included and differentiate themselves from other carriers especially in the indirect channel.