While attending Sabre's Compass forum in Santa Monica, Calif., last month, features editor Emma Weissmann spoke with president and CEO Kurt Ekert about the state of the industry, why Sabre sees itself as an AI-first company rather than a legacy GDS and what advisors should know about incorporating AI into their businesses.
Kurt Ekert
Q: During Sabre's last earnings call, you said you expected second-quarter air bookings to remain roughly flat if geopolitical conditions stabilized. Has your outlook changed?
A: We said on the call that we were seeing similar, albeit slightly more favorable, trends in April. But beyond that, I can't comment. What I would say is that corporate has held up very well, and we have seen the Americas hold up very well. Where you saw the regional impacts were EMEA [Europe, the Middle East and Africa] and Asia-Pacific, related to how they touch the Middle East. What we expect, and what we articulated on the call, is that when the war ceases, Middle Eastern impact will abate pretty quickly. There will still be an impact through the balance of this calendar year for the impact of fuel, and you're seeing airlines reflect that in their fares. At some point, the consumer is not fully elastic, and demand is going to soften, which is why the carriers have brought down their capacity projections. But we think as you get toward the end of the year, you'll be back toward normalcy. I think you've seen a nominal impact on leisure demand so far. Overall, if you listen to the commentary of the analysts and airlines, demand is holding up pretty well.
Q: Over the past few years, you've made a heavy investment in AI. How do you approach folks who still have the perception that Sabre is just a legacy GDS?
A: I think there's a broader narrative in the industry that does not reflect the reality of our offering today. So how do you fight that [perception]? You make sure you innovate at pace, which is what we're really focused on. Ninety-nine percent-plus of our compute is in the cloud. We're built on top of Google Gemini. We've built a mosaic of content. We've got 2 million hotel properties. We express that through the most sophisticated algorithms and caching in the world. The vast majority of everything we do is through modern APIs. We've rebuilt the entire technology platform, Mosaic. From an operating and from a software standpoint, this company looks nothing like it did seven or eight years ago. We're a pure B2B player. The sexy way to talk about it is: We are the technical plumbing of the travel industry. We're pumping that content. We're doing that at speed. We're doing it with great security capabilities. All you have to worry about is a great front-end experience, whether you're a TMC, an agency, an airline or a hotel.
Q: What's your advice to travel advisors who are hesitant about applying AI to their businesses, or who worry that AI will be replacing them?
A: If you're an advisor, you have to look at the non-value-add elements of what you do to serve your customer. You can lean on folks like Sabre to help you with your productivity, so you're focused on selling, versus doing administrative tasks. Your customers today may like you on the phone, or you may interact through email or some sort of chat. But as they become more comfortable with conversational commerce, you're going to have to have consumer-grade capabilities there. We can provide you with those. And you're going to have to look at the broader marketplace and say, "How's consumer behavior changing?" Watch those signals very carefully, and watch how consumer behavior is changing, and meet them at that place. You have to embrace those capabilities. And you don't have to develop them in-house; we have stuff off the shelf that you can use to do your job better.
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This interview was edited for length and clarity.