SOUTHLAKE, Texas – Oct. 31, 2022 – Sabre Corporation [NASDAQ: SABR] and BCD Travel today announced a long-term, multi-faceted strategic partnership that is expected to drive meaningful growth and advancement for both companies and across the travel ecosystem.
Under the newly expanded and long-term technology agreement, BCD Travel expects to increase its booking levels with Sabre. Additionally, the two companies will jointly invest and collaborate on new and advanced solutions that will help accelerate the technology-driven evolution underway across the corporate travel ecosystem.
“BCD Travel is a long-time, valued Sabre partner. Over the years, we’ve tackled industry challenges, innovated and grown together. Today, we take another important step in our partnership as we mutually commit to advancing the future of the travel,” said Kurt Ekert, president of Sabre. “This agreement demonstrates our continuing commitment to helping BCD achieve its objectives to differentiate its offerings, improve operational efficiency and grow. Whether that takes the form of providing solutions, or enabling solutions, we will continue to build and sustain the value-added relationship we’ve enjoyed with BCD for so many years.”
The partnership will see the two industry leaders focus on creative solutions for managing growing complexities and evolving customer expectations as well as transforming the impacts of technology and marketplace dynamics into opportunities. Sabre will continue to utilize its technical expertise, innovative energies and corporate stability to help enable BCD’s success globally.
“This agreement is in line with our strategy to improve our agility, flexibility and responsiveness in a shifting environment,” said BCD Travel CEO and President John Snyder. “By extending our long-standing partnership with Sabre, we’ll streamline our distribution technology footprint and simplify our operational, technical and future development infrastructure, allowing us to move more rapidly on our clients’ behalf as we innovate, anticipate and adjust to emerging market opportunities. As we focus on post-Covid travel complexities and engage on deeper technology collaboration and joint development areas, we will enhance our speed to market with functionalities to improve travelers’ planning and booking experience including bringing NDC to life.”
As BCD and Sabre extend and deepen their existing relationship, both companies are expected to benefit as Sabre pursues its ambitious goals of:
- Accomplishing its tech transformation with cloud migration, microservice enabled architecture, and use of the latest smart technologies and digital innovations like AI and ML for a future-ready environment both Sabre and BCD can utilize.
- Continuing to champion balanced supplier distribution economics on behalf of travel industry constituents for the content access our customers need.
- Delivering premium retailing, distribution and fulfillment capabilities, including NDC-enabled solutions, across the value chain.
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About Sabre Corporation
Sabre Corporation is a leading software and technology company that powers the global travel industry, serving a wide range of travel companies including airlines, hoteliers, travel agencies and other suppliers. The company provides retailing, distribution and fulfilment solutions that help its customers operate more efficiently, drive revenue and offer personalized traveler experiences. Through its leading travel marketplace, Sabre connects travel suppliers with buyers from around the globe. Sabre’s technology platform manages more than $260B worth of global travel spend annually. Headquartered in Southlake, Texas, USA, Sabre serves customers in more than 160 countries around the world. For more information visit www.sabre.com.
About BCD Travel
BCD Travel helps companies make the most of what they spend on travel. We give travelers innovative tools that keep them safe and productive and help them make good choices on the road. We partner with travel and procurement leaders to simplify the complexities of business travel, drive savings and satisfaction, and move whole companies toward their goals. In short, we help our clients travel smart and achieve more. We make this happen in 106 countries with a global client retention rate of 97%, the highest in the industry. For more information, visit www.bcdtravel.com.
About BCD Group
BCD Group is a market leader in the travel industry. The privately owned company was founded in 1975 by John Fentener van Vlissingen and consists of BCD Travel (global corporate travel management and its subsidiary BCD Meetings & Events, global meetings and events agency) and Park ‘N Fly (off-airport parking). For more information, visit www.bcdgroup.com.
Forward-Looking Statements
Certain statements herein are forward-looking statements about trends, future events, uncertainties and our plans and expectations of what may happen in the future. Any statements that are not historical or current facts are forward-looking statements. In many cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by terms such as “expect,” “anticipate,” “seek,” will,” “believe,” “estimate,” “project,” “possible,” “may,” “should,” “would,” “intend,” “potential,” or the negative of these terms or other comparable terminology. Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause Sabre’s actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performances or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. The potential risks and uncertainties include, among others, the severity, extent and duration of the global COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on our business and results of operations, financial condition and credit ratings, as well as on the travel industry and consumer spending more broadly, the actions taken to contain the disease or treat its impact, the effectiveness and rate of vaccinations, the effect of remote working arrangements on our operations and the speed and extent of the recovery across the broader travel ecosystem, dependency on transaction volumes in the global travel industry, particularly air travel transaction volumes, including from airlines’ insolvency, suspension of service or aircraft groundings, the effect of cost savings initiatives, the timing, implementation and effects of the technology investment and other strategic initiatives, the completion and effects of travel platforms, exposure to pricing pressure in the Travel Solutions business, changes affecting travel supplier customers, maintenance of the integrity of our systems and infrastructure and the effect of any security incidents, failure to adapt to technological advancements, competition in the travel distribution market and solutions markets, implementation of software solutions, reliance on third parties to provide information technology services and the effects of these services, implementation and effects of new, amended or renewed agreements and strategic partnerships, including anticipated savings, dependence on establishing, maintaining and renewing contracts with customers and other counterparties and collecting amounts due to us under these agreements, dependence on relationships with travel buyers, collection, processing, storage, use and transmission of personal data and risks associated with PCI compliance, our ability to recruit, train and retain employees, including our key executive officers and technical employees, the financial and business results and effects of acquisitions and divestitures of businesses or business operations, reliance on the value of our brands, the effects of any litigation and regulatory reviews and investigations, adverse global and regional economic and political conditions, including, but not limited to, recessionary or inflationary economic conditions, risks related to the current military conflict in Ukraine, risks arising from global operations, reliance on the value of our brands, the effects of new legislation or regulations or the failure to comply with regulations or other legal requirements, use of third-party distributor partners, risks related to our significant amount of indebtedness, the effects of the implementation of new accounting standards and tax-related matters. More information about potential risks and uncertainties that could affect our business and results of operations is included in the “Risk Factors” and “Forward-Looking Statements” sections in our Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q filed with the SEC on August 2, 2022, in our Annual Report on Form 10-K filed with the SEC on February 18, 2022 and in our other filings with the SEC. Although we believe that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements are reasonable, we cannot guarantee future events, outlook, guidance, results, actions, levels of activity, performance or achievements. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. Unless required by law, Sabre undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements to reflect circumstances or events after the date they are made.
