Sabre Travel Network’s recent acquisition of Singapore-based Abacus has seen the company’s global operations unified under a single brand. Bruce Piper spoke to regional senior vice president Rohan Mendis about what this means for Australia.
Sabre’s Australian operations are poised for significant growth, if Roshan Mendis has anything to say about it. Fundamentals for the business are ideal, and after some years of shifting ownership having everything under the single Sabre brand signifies the strong global proposition offered by the company.
Mendis was recently appointed to lead Sabre in the Asia-Pacific region, and one of his first acts on taking up his new role was to establish a new divisional structure, with Australia, New Zealand and Indonesia now headed up by Sabre veteran Richard Morgan. Other divisions include North Asia, South Asia and South-East Asia.
Mendis said Sabre had long wanted to “play directly in this region,” with Asia- Pacific leading the globe in terms of growth – and Australia, alongside India, one of the strongest performing countries. He plans to highlight the dominant position held by Sabre in other markets – in particular the GDS firm’s global strength in corporate and online – to make a bigger impact locally.
“We’re the largest player in these segments, and will continue to be,” he told travelBulletin. “We now have one owner, one agenda, one purpose – to equip our partners to thrive and win in the marketplace”.
Sabre staff have been enthusiastic about the new ownership which will also potentially provide career opportunities for them on a global scale. “The energy is palpable,” Mendis said.
The new ownership structure is also likely to see the local region have a strong influence on the Sabre product roadmap. “Asia Pacific is now a mainstay in our portfolio,” Mendis said. However despite the rapid evolution of technology, Sabre still has its eyes firmly fixed on its basic purpose, which is to “always deliver the best fares between point A and B – that’s our fundamental bread and butter”.
Having said that, Sabre also has its finger on the pulse of technology, with online growing much faster than other areas and the system required to respond effectively to very high shopping intensity. “We’re seeing strong growth in search traffic, metasearch and mobile – we are able to cater to that user and traveller behaviour.”
Another focus for Sabre is the mountain of data it has at its fingertips due to the massive volume of transactions it is constantly processing on a global basis. “We can leverage what we have for the benefit of our agency and supplier partners to serve customers better,” Mendis said.
Key to the platform is the Sabre Red Workspace, which is highly geared towards enabling merchandising and selling. The app-like environment provides the “best of both worlds,” with a command-line interface for experienced users complemented by a graphical user interface – all aggregated at the desktop level with easy expansion to incorporate other content such as low-cost carriers, cruise, rail, user-generated content and direct XML connections to suppliers.
Mendis is very bullish on the prospects for Sabre’s operations in Australia. The big VFR market here is very suited to GDS distribution, he said, while there’s also a big and growing corporate market. Sabre already has a significant number of “marquee global customers” who may expand in Australia, while locally there are sophisticated corporate and leisure buyers who want to be able to offer their clients the best schedules, rates and availability.
He said the high cost of labour in Australia is also a key driver for the efficiencies that Sabre can offer. “For travel agencies to scale they need tools, automation, flexible back and mid office solutions,” Mendis said.
The fact that a number of Australian travel agency groups are growing strongly on a global scale – such as Flight Centre, Corporate Travel Management and Webjet – means Sabre’s new worldwide proposition presents “our best chance of winning them”.
“It’s an exciting place to do business,” he concluded.
