Sabre tackles the airline industry's toughest retailing challenges from NDC to tomorrow's storefront

Delta Air Lines joins Sabre's Beyond NDC Program

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Mar 04, 2019, 09:30 ET

SOUTHLAKE, Texas, March 4, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Sabre Corporation (NASDAQ: SABR) is leading a collaborative effort to define and deliver a next generation retailing experience to airline customers from personalized NDC-enabled offers to a fresh, innovative approach to shopping, comparing and booking.

Sabre is pleased to announce Delta Air Lines as the newest addition to its Beyond NDC program, a cross-industry group working to accelerate the development, integration and testing of end-to-end NDC capabilities. In addition, Sabre has been working with Delta and other major carriers along with ATPCO to develop and test a new approach to shopping based on the next generation storefront (NGS) standards currently under development.

"Delivering a modern-day retail experience in third party channels requires changes across the distribution ecosystem. Sabre's Beyond NDC initiative is a great platform for cross-industry collaboration, which we see as an opportunity to deliver the benefits of NDC at scale, while minimizing disruption to our agencies and customers," said Jeff Lobl, managing director – distribution strategy at Delta. "We also applaud Sabre's commitment to Next Generation Storefront and the greatly improved shopping experience that it will provide."

Powered by its latest air shopping API, Sabre's NGS solution categorizes airline offerings by product attributes and normalizes the data for easy comparison shopping. This solution will deliver initial shopping results that include carriers' complete product lines, ensuring Sabre-connected travel agencies, online travel agencies and other third parties can provide better information to help travelers choose the offer that is right for them. In the second quarter, Sabre will collaborate with its Beyond NDC agency partners to test its Proof of Concept within Sabre Red 360.

"As content becomes more complex due to branded fares, a la carte ancillaries, bundling, and soon dynamic NDC offers, the industry faces another challenge - how to display the diverse offers in an easily comparable way," said Brett Burgess, senior vice president of product, for Sabre Travel Network. "Our solution provides the built-in flexibility needed to compare and integrate multiple attributes, and to evolve with our customers' needs."

ATPCO is inviting interested parties to join its NGS working group of airlines, sales channels and technology providers including Sabre and Delta, to provide ongoing governance over the developing standards.

"The Next Generation Storefront will drive a more effective approach to shopping and a dramatic shift in how travelers think about overall value when buying flights," said Jonathan Savitch, chief commercial officer at ATPCO. "We're delighted to see Sabre's innovations in this industry effort to modernize flight shopping through NGS and look forward to building on this foundation with Sabre and the industry at large."

About Sabre Corporation
Sabre Corporation is the leading technology provider to the global travel industry. Sabre's software, data, mobile and distribution solutions are used by hundreds of airlines and thousands of hotel properties to manage critical operations, including passenger and guest reservations, revenue management, flight, network and crew management. Sabre also operates a leading global travel marketplace, which processes more than US$120 billion of global travel spend annually by connecting travel buyers and suppliers. Headquartered in Southlake, Texas, USA, Sabre serves customers in more than 160 countries around the world.

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Media Contact:
Heidi Castle
Sabre
682-682-4290
[email protected]

SOURCE Sabre Corporation