(From left) Mancy Thadani, regional manager, Sabre Travel Network India; Mr. K.V. Abdul Nazar, Chairman & Managing Director of Akbar Travels of India; Jeet Sawhney, regional director for Sabre Travel Network South Asia; and Ankur Chatterjee, country manager, Sabre Travel Network India, celebrate renewed multi-year content and technology agreement.
SINGAPORE – 2 June, 2016 – Akbar Travels of India Pvt. Ltd. has renewed a multi-year content and technology agreement with Sabre Corporation (NASDAQ: SABR), the leading technology provider to the global travel industry, and engaged new solutions to enhance online services and drive operational efficiencies as it accelerates global growth.
An established player in India and the Middle East with a quickly expanding global footprint, driven by the addition of overseas operations in the United States and Southeast Asia, Akbar is pushing both domestic and overseas growth.
“Akbar Travels has been working with Sabre for more than two decades, during which time our relationship has grown even stronger,” commented Mr. K.V. Abdul Nazar, Chairman & Managing Director of Akbar Travels of India. “Now we are looking forward to leveraging Sabre’s new technologies to help us grow further globally.”
India is expected to be the third largest market globally by 2031, after the United States and China, and UNWTO predicts that it will account for 50 million outbound tourists by 2020. Foreign tourist arrivals into India are also on the rise with double-digit year on year growth recorded in the first quarter of 2016
[i].
“India is poised on the edge of vast growth. Already one of the fastest expanding outbound travel markets in the world, it presents a major opportunity for travel companies. But it also presents a challenge: a rapidly evolving landscape which even established players, like Akbar, must navigate and adapt to stay ahead,” commented Roshan Mendis, senior vice president for Sabre Travel Network Asia Pacific.
“For example today we’re starting to see a notable shift to online bookings in India, particularly for flights and accommodations. That’s why we recommended Akbar use
Sabre APIs to enhance the whole online shopping experience and start driving more revenue from this channel, leveraging Sabre’s global network of rich content to meet evolving outbound travel demands,” Mendis added.
Providing easier, faster and more flexible access to the Sabre system functionality and content from an agency’s online shopping platform,
Sabre APIs allow travel agencies to provide services more tuned into how consumers naturally think about travel – from inspirational and theme shopping to intelligence services such as low-fare forecasting.
Akbar is also turning its focus to international operations and India’s increasingly lucrative inbound tourism market.
Automated Exchanges, which automates the ticketing reissuance process for agents, will free up agent time to enhance customer service and drive new business internationally.
A recent Sabre survey
[ii] found that the average time to perform a manual exchange on a simple ticket itinerary was 14 minutes. Using Sabre
Automated Exchanges, this time is reduced to three minutes. For every 50 tickets exchanged with Automated Exchanges, one full day of manpower can be saved.
“Sabre has accounted for our multi-faceted growth objectives and used their extensive knowledge of the changing global travel landscape to deliver a suite of technologies that exactly match our challenges and opportunities today,” added Mr. Nazar.
Sabre has had offices in India since 1994, and today employs over 1000 staff across Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kochi, Kolkata, Kozhikode, New Delhi, Pune and Thiruvananthapuram and Mumbai. Bengaluru is also home to one of Sabre’s global technology development centres which, since its launch in 2005, has become a critical component in Sabre’s global technology innovation strategy.
For more information on Automated Exchanges and Sabre’s automation research:
http://www.sabretravelnetwork.com/home/solutions/product/automated_exchanges.
###
About Sabre Corporation
Sabre Corporation is the leading technology provider to the global travel industry. Sabre’s software, data, mobile and distribution solutions are used by hundreds of airlines and thousands of hotel properties to manage critical operations, including passenger and guest reservations, revenue management, flight, network and crew management. Sabre also operates a leading global travel marketplace, which processes more than $120 billion of estimated travel spend annually by connecting travel buyers and suppliers. Headquartered in Southlake, Texas, USA, Sabre serves customers in more than 160 countries around the world.
Media Contact
Hilary Davies
Sabre Asia Pacific
+65 6426 0788
hilary.davies@sabre.com
[i] The Ministry of Tourism compiles monthly estimates of Foreign Tourist Arrivals (FTAs) on the basis of Nationality-wise, Port-wise data received from the Bureau of Immigration (BOI) and Foreign Exchange Earnings (FEEs) from tourism on the basis of data available from Reserve Bank of India.
Source.
[ii] Survey featuring 45 travel agencies across ten Asia Pacific markets.
(From left) Mancy Thadani, regional manager, Sabre Travel Network India; Mr. K.V. Abdul Nazar, Chairman & Managing Director of Akbar Travels of India; Jeet Sawhney, regional director for Sabre Travel Network South Asia; and Ankur Chatterjee, country manager, Sabre Travel Network India, celebrate renewed multi-year content and technology agreement.
SINGAPORE – 2 June, 2016 – Akbar Travels of India Pvt. Ltd. has renewed a multi-year content and technology agreement with Sabre Corporation (NASDAQ: SABR), the leading technology provider to the global travel industry, and engaged new solutions to enhance online services and drive operational efficiencies as it accelerates global growth.
An established player in India and the Middle East with a quickly expanding global footprint, driven by the addition of overseas operations in the United States and Southeast Asia, Akbar is pushing both domestic and overseas growth.
“Akbar Travels has been working with Sabre for more than two decades, during which time our relationship has grown even stronger,” commented Mr. K.V. Abdul Nazar, Chairman & Managing Director of Akbar Travels of India. “Now we are looking forward to leveraging Sabre’s new technologies to help us grow further globally.”
India is expected to be the third largest market globally by 2031, after the United States and China, and UNWTO predicts that it will account for 50 million outbound tourists by 2020. Foreign tourist arrivals into India are also on the rise with double-digit year on year growth recorded in the first quarter of 2016[i].
“India is poised on the edge of vast growth. Already one of the fastest expanding outbound travel markets in the world, it presents a major opportunity for travel companies. But it also presents a challenge: a rapidly evolving landscape which even established players, like Akbar, must navigate and adapt to stay ahead,” commented Roshan Mendis, senior vice president for Sabre Travel Network Asia Pacific.
“For example today we’re starting to see a notable shift to online bookings in India, particularly for flights and accommodations. That’s why we recommended Akbar use Sabre APIs to enhance the whole online shopping experience and start driving more revenue from this channel, leveraging Sabre’s global network of rich content to meet evolving outbound travel demands,” Mendis added.
Providing easier, faster and more flexible access to the Sabre system functionality and content from an agency’s online shopping platform, Sabre APIs allow travel agencies to provide services more tuned into how consumers naturally think about travel – from inspirational and theme shopping to intelligence services such as low-fare forecasting.
Akbar is also turning its focus to international operations and India’s increasingly lucrative inbound tourism market. Automated Exchanges, which automates the ticketing reissuance process for agents, will free up agent time to enhance customer service and drive new business internationally.
A recent Sabre survey[ii] found that the average time to perform a manual exchange on a simple ticket itinerary was 14 minutes. Using Sabre Automated Exchanges, this time is reduced to three minutes. For every 50 tickets exchanged with Automated Exchanges, one full day of manpower can be saved.
