The Covid-19 vaccine rollout in the U.S. is positively affecting booking trends, according to Sabre president and CEO Sean Menke.
Speaking during the company's most recent financial earnings call on Tuesday morning, Menke said international markets have been slower to recover with slow vaccine rollouts and high daily case counts. But in North America, which accounted for 55% of Sabre's GDS bookings in 2019, things are looking better. Menke specifically pointed to daily vaccinations, which increased from around 1.7 million per day in February to 2.7 million per day in April.
"U.S. travel trends have picked up on this momentum," Menke said. "Our North American gross air bookings, which reflect new demand, have recovered to nearly 50% of 2019 levels over the last two weeks of April."
In the first two months of the year, gross North American bookings were down 72% compared with the same period in 2019, Menke said. The rest of the world was down around 84%. But in April, North American bookings were down 53%, and the rest of the world was down 77%. Domestic U.S. travel has been leading the recovery, and Menke said there have been some "green shoots" with U.S. business-travel bookings coming in from travel management companies that use Sabre.
Other markets are expected to recover more slowly because of fragmentation, tighter travel restrictions, slower vaccination rates and new strains of the coronavirus.
Covid-19 again heavily impacted Sabre's financial results in the first quarter, which ended March 31. Revenue fell 50%, to $327 million compared with $659 million in the first quarter of 2020. Sabre operated at a loss of $203 million in Q1, compared to an operating loss of $151 million, driven primarily by the coronavirus crisis.
Sabre stock fell by more than 15% in the hour following the call.