June 25-27, 2018 – Hilton Metropole hosts the first ever Sabre STX conference in London.

Sabre has a long history of putting on a good show in North America. But taking the show on the road is something we haven’t seen in recent memory.

The conference was well attended by upwards of 600 industry executives from a wide range of travel sectors. Attendees were invited to take a good long look at Sabre’s product offerings at the Exchange. Products were logically divided into sections appealing to hoteliers, airlines and agencies, including retail, corporate and online.

Also in attendance was a generous portion of Sabre’s top management team. In addition to making general session presentations, many of Sabre’s stars also participated in smaller breakout sessions. Attendees made good use of these smaller sessions getting time to ask pointed questions.

What seemed to be on everyone’s mind was NDC (New Distribution Capability) and how this big idea will impact the distribution of travel products in the years to come. One breakout session attended by many in the online travel sector tried to identify what might accelerate the adoption of NDC. Attendees collaborated together to rank the importance of some hypothetical events and circumstances that had been prepared in advance by the session moderators. While consensus on what it all might mean was difficult to achieve the exercise did provoke interesting discussion between the attendees and Sabre execs.

Our favorite session of the entire event was the interview of Sabre board member Hervé Couturier by Sean Menke, Sabre’s President and CEO. Mr. Couturier pointed out that while there has been considerable hand-wringing by the GDSs over NDC somebody would still need to aggregate content. And nobody is better positioned than GDSs to provide that service to the industry. The interview was candid, informative and honest. We loved it!

We are very much looking forward to STX in Singapore coming up in August 28-30 at Marina Bay Sands. Hopefully we will see you there!

Travel Automation introduces KLeer Cloud Service; KLeer takes all the work out of searching for last seat availability.

Any travel agent will tell you that finding a seat on a sold-out plane is like finding a needle in a haystack – a lot of work. And while agents have been looking for seats on sold-out planes since the invention of Sabre, the task has grown considerably harder and more frustrating over the years.

The problem is that fewer and fewer airlines are allowing waitlists to be created on sold-out flights. Even when they do allow a waitlisted segment, last-minute seats are often placed back into inventory and don’t successfully find their way back into the reservation. They sit in open inventory, only to be scooped up by some other agent with more time on his or her hands. And if the customer is willing to take any seat on the plane but would prefer the least expensive that becomes available? Forget it. That would mean waitlisting multiple classes on the same flight and that’s not allowed by anybody.

Travel Automation’s cloud service, KLeer, solves all of this. KLeer allows the agent to waitlist any flight, any class, even multiple classes. KLeer then works in the background to look for the desired seats. The agency can select how often KLeer checks the inventory: from a few times a day to every 5 minutes. The agency maintains complete control. When KLeer finds a seat the agent is notified by email, text message and/or queue placement. And, if desired, the seat can actually be booked right into the PNR when it is found.

Dale Weston, Sr. Vice President of Travel Automation, says, “We are so excited about KLeer. This is a really useful tool for Sabre agencies and it will be affordable. Our hope is that everyone takes advantage of the free 30 day trial.”

At $499 USD per PCC per year, KLeer seems like a clear winner.

Acendas Travel, Kansas City MO, has selected Travel Automation to design and develop their new unused ticket management system.  The software solution will integrate multiple data sources with multiple end-points making it possible for Acendas travelers to leverage their valuable unused tickets.   Acendas management will also benefit from real-time access to accumulated unused ticket data.   The unused ticket management system is the latest collaboration between Acendas Travel and Travel Automation.

Travel Automation will be an official sponsor of the Travel Technology Europe trade show in London on February 21 and 22, 2018. The show will be held at Olympia in London and will be attended by some 3000 travel industry personnel. Travel Automation will exhibit at stand TT138.

Travel Automation announces the release of Less. Less automatically performs a pricing entry against an existing itinerary to make sure you still have the lowest fare. If a lower fare is found Less sends an email notification to the travel agent. Less is available as a red app in the Sabre Red App Centre or as a Cloud Service from Travel Automation.

Travel Automation announced the release of a new enhancement for QBotic, the suite of schedule change software for the travel industry. QBotic Service will now include the ability to distribute PNRs from the inbound queues directly to agent’s personal queues. The queue distribution is based on the PNR creation agent’s ID.

Dale Weston, Sr. Vice President at Travel Automation, says, “This new QBotic Service feature is a nice improvement for agencies that do not have dedicated staff watching the inbound queues. While QBotic Service handles about 80% of the PNRs with no agent involvement, the few that do need attention can now go directly to the person that needs to see it.”

This new QBotic Service enhancement is available now for Sabre and will be released shortly for Amadeus.