Atlas Travel

Searching and shopping, according to Mimi Cleary of Atlas Travel, are the most critical capabilities for any corporate travel management professional. Fast and accurate searching, sorting, and booking, can mean the difference in happy or disappointed customers, satisfied or frustrated agents, and profitable or unprofitable itineraries.

As Vice President, Supplier Relations & Strategic Sourcing at Atlas Travel in Marlborough, Massachusetts, Cleary’s role is to ensure Atlas Travel agents, clients, and shareholders have access to the best travel technology. For the past 35 years, that travel technology has been powered by Sabre.

In addition to the core Sabre GDS, two of the most exciting travel solutions – designed for better searching and shopping – include Sabre Content Services for Lodging (CSL) and Fare Focus, which Atlas Travel implemented with positive outcomes. 

Content Services for Lodging consolidates, normalizes, and organizes lodging content from the Sabre GDS and aggregator sources, offering access to 1.5 million worldwide options. This streamlined approach enhances agent search efficiency, providing a wider range of shopping and booking choices, showcasing preferred suppliers, and aligning with corporate travel policies.

“Content Services for Lodging brings consistency to lodging listings which our industry has never really had before,” Cleary said. “We can see photos, amenities, and preferred hotel listings, with GDS and aggregator side-by-side content comparisons all in one place. This is a huge time-saver for our agents.”

Fare Focus, part of the Sabre Agency Retailer suite of products, is a product that helps Atlas Travel find the best flights by filtering out restrictive, low-value fares, ensuring it offers the best content for the ever-changing travel plans of corporate travelers.  

“Fare Focus applies guidelines and automatically eliminates the noise of restricted airline fares, so we don’t have to read the rules or take the chance of accidentally booking the wrong fare,” Cleary said.

“The user-friendly Sabre solutions make it easy for anyone to learn, which is very important for our agents,” Cleary mentioned. “Our agents can come in from any background and plug and play and be fine.”

Cleary and her team have a proven and well-practiced implementation model that is closely supported by Sabre. “Sabre trains our trainers, who then gather agent questions from small training groups, consult Sabre for answers, and promptly document the knowledge and information in our internal system,” Cleary explained. “Sabre has consistently been open to working with us in this manner and is flexible if we need more training sessions. This approach also ensures the success of their products.”

Sabre’s attentive account support and training has helped sustain a strong working relationship over the years.

“We’ve consolidated our business with Sabre over the years because we’ve always felt Sabre was easier to do business with and had the best long-term vision for their travel solutions. Financials and tools have been a big part of it, and we knew Sabre would be by our side through any process”.

Cleary mentioned these latest travel solutions are delivering as promised in terms of speed, accuracy, and both agent and traveler satisfaction.

“CSL and Fare Focus are easily saving us 3-5 minutes or more per hotel and airfare bookings, not to mention the elimination of passive segments which take extra time to book, and this means a boost in our agents’ operational efficiency,” Cleary said.

At the end of each day Cleary receives a report on all customer satisfaction surveys completed that day. Experience ratings remain high and complaints about lodging and restricted airfares are rare now.

“Our travelers rate us good to excellent 90% of the time, and our corporate travel managers consistently comment on our high preferred hotel attachment rates and the aggregator reliability and accuracy.”