ORLANDO -- Sabre
announced at TheTradeShow here that the TripTailor dynamic
packaging product that it rolled out to Sabre subscribers in August
will be available to all agents, regardless of GDS vendor, sometime
in November, accessible via www.triptailor.com.
TripTailor users
also will be automatically linked to Sabre's Agent59 product, which
affords agents the opportunity to book a client into its
last-minute options when the client's trip schedule and itinerary
call for it.
TripTailor and
Agent59, both travel wholesale businesses operated by Sabre, earn
agents commission on client packages. According to TripTailor
general manager Dan Westbrook, with TripTailor the pay is 10% on
ground and 5% on air (10% through the end of this year); Agent59
commissions are 5%.
Agents can mark up
the packages, as well, producing a single, inclusive price seen by
the customer.
Westbrook said
TripTailor builds on thousands of merchant-rate hotels in
destinations around the world -- in secondary as well as major
cities; bulk-priced air; net-rate car rentals; plus access to more
than 1,700 travel extras, such as transfers, event 
admissions, sightseeing
excursions, dining experiences, ski lift tickets and
more.
Sabre also used
TheTradeShow here as the occasion to roll out components of its new
leisure portal, available through the MySabre desktop and designed
to give agents one-stop access to everything they need to sell
leisure trips, build tour packages dynamically and manage their
customer databases.
Besides TripTailor
and Agent59, that portal leads to or soon will fully integrate
Sabre Vacations, Sabre Cruises, Sabre Consolidator, the Trams
ClientBase Plus database manager, marketing programs, training and
support opportunities and a Sabre Rewards Plus point-based loyalty
program for frontline agents.
Sabre also
announced improvements to its Sabre Air suite, including the
addition of a fare management system called Sabre
MyFares.
The effect for
agents, said Kathryn Hayden, Sabre's senior media relations
manager, will be a system that works faster and offers up more
choices, in part by better managing the agents' negotiated air
fares.
Chris Kroeger,
Sabre's senior vice president for North America, said the one-stop
leisure portal and MyFares are among the enhancements the company
had alluded to as early as June while the vendor was still deeply
involved in its negotiations to ensure the major U.S. airlines
would provide Sabre with full air content without charging fees of
retail travel agents.
With that exercise
completed after about nine months, Kroeger said, the vendor and its
customers are in effect free to look ahead and focus on things like
enhancements to a system that is now assured of some
stability.
Every Sabre
subscriber also is still assured of at least a 20-cent incentive on
a per-segment basis.
Hayden said Sabre
wanted to keep some incentive in place because "we believe there is
a role for incentives and we didn't want to be dictated
to."
Kroeger added that
retention of some incentive amount was one of Sabre's key goals
when negotiating new contracts with the major U.S. carriers. "There
was a lot of discussion of zero [incentives] or of agents paying
the vendors [with airline reimbursements], but we wanted to keep
some control."
The 20-cent
incentive has long been Sabre's lowest incentive level for the
smallest producers, which means that, for the smallest agencies,
the latest GDS-airline contracts will have no impact.
To
contact the reporter who wrote this article, send e-mail to Nadine
Godwin at [email protected].
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