The Big Pitch – shaping the future of the travel industry

Imagine. Imagine how it could work differently, better, faster, friendlier … these are the key drivers behind Sabre’s The Big Pitch. This company-wide ideation event encourages team members from around the globe to collaborate and exchange ideas to shape the future of travel and build for tomorrow.  

Friendly Competiton

The Big Pitch is an open-to-all competition that takes place over two weeks and challenges team members to bring forward ideas that revolutionize the way the world travels. Through a collaborative platform, team members partner, gather insights, share knowledge, and craft compelling elevator pitches in one of four categories. Each team then presents these pitches to a panel of judges with the top 13 pitches going on to the live, internally-broadcast, finale where a “winner” is declared. The pitches are judged on five criteria: creativity/originality, business/customer value, viability of solution/idea, presentation, and inclusion and collaboration. The team with the winning pitch wins a special prize and can bring their pitch to life through our G-Blitz event later in the year.

The Focus

The Big Pitch event’s four categories are all designed to address a specific aspect of the travel industry: Customer Experience; Stability and Tech Transformation; Future Capabilities; and Process, Operations and Automation. The Customer Experience category aims to improve the way customers feel and benefit from Sabre’s offerings. The Stability & Tech Transformation category focuses on impacting product health, stability, and security of Sabre systems. The Future Capabilities category encourages participants to explore changing paradigms in travel content distribution and leverage current data for better decision-making and customer service. The Process, Operations & Automation category seeks to create operational efficiencies, and improve processes, automation, time-to-market, and business insights.

Global Support

Team members from around the globe value this event as a time to reflect on what could be and explore the possibilities with people outside their day-to-day lives. They work together freely with members from across functions, sync up, and share knowledge. Participants get better visibility on new technologies and how to use them to improve travel experiences. The event helps team members harness their creativity with the right set of tools on Google Cloud.

“The Big Pitch is an initiative by Sabre that is designed to promote a culture of innovation and out of the box thinking among our team members. We believe it’s a great way to tap into the collective intelligence of our team members that could turn into new opportunities for the travel tech industry in the long run. Besides that, it also allows our team members to collaborate and compete in a healthy way while we all get exposure to diverse ideas and perspectives.”   
— Sriram Gopalswamy, vice president – site reliability engineering, Sabre Bengaluru 

“Big Pitch allows ideas and creativity to thrive with a purpose and a framework where all team members can exercise their freedom. An innovative culture, as any culture, is created by the shared behaviors of the members of an organization; in that sense, Big Pitch provides a safe environment where new ideas can be nurtured, shared, and rewarded.”
— Luis Azevedo, director – software engineering, global product development, Sabre Uruguay 

“It’s a chance to bring your idea from just an idea to a well-thought-out business pitch by collaborating with different areas of the Sabre business. And, of course, recognition from your peers and leadership.” 
— Aodan O’Sullivan, director – performance engineering, Sabre Poland 

“The Big Pitch is a great opportunity for team members to unleash their talent by crafting innovative ideas and solutions that will shape the future of our company. It is one of many programs designed to embrace the diverse skill sets of our team members, inviting them to contribute transformational ideas that impact Sabre in meaningful ways”.  
— David Moore, executive vice president – global product development and chief technology officer 

Building for Tomorrow 

The Big Pitch, currently underway for 2023, is proving itself yet again as an event that brings all of Sabre together to exchange ideas, encourage one another and shape the future of the travel industry. The outside-in thinking leads to actionable hypotheses, which result in value to customers, clients, and the business – and is one of the many ways Sabre continues to lean forward and create exceptional experiences.