Sabre Corporation (Sabre) operates as a technology company.
The company connects the world’s leading travel suppliers, including airlines, hotels, car rental brands, rail carriers, cruise lines and tour operators, with travel buyers in a comprehensive travel marketplace. The company also offers travel suppliers an extensive suite of leading software solutions, ranging from airline and hotel reservations systems to solutions that manage day-to-day hotel operations. The company is committed to he...
Sabre Corporation (Sabre) operates as a technology company.
The company connects the world’s leading travel suppliers, including airlines, hotels, car rental brands, rail carriers, cruise lines and tour operators, with travel buyers in a comprehensive travel marketplace. The company also offers travel suppliers an extensive suite of leading software solutions, ranging from airline and hotel reservations systems to solutions that manage day-to-day hotel operations. The company is committed to helping customers operate more efficiently, drive revenue and offer personalized traveler experiences with next-generation technology solutions.
Business Segments and Products
The company operates its business and presents its results through two business segments: Travel Solutions and Hospitality Solutions.
Travel Solutions
The company's Travel Solutions business provides travel solutions for travel suppliers and travel buyers through a business-to-business travel marketplace consisting of its distribution network and a broad set of solutions that integrate with its distribution platform to add value for travel suppliers and travel buyers. Its distribution business facilitates travel by efficiently bringing together travel content, such as inventory, prices, and availability, from a broad array of travel suppliers, including airlines, hotels, car rental brands, rail carriers, cruise lines, and tour operators, with a network of travel buyers, including online travel agencies (‘OTAs’), offline travel agencies, travel management companies (‘TMCs’), and corporate travel departments.
Additionally, the company's Travel Solutions business offers a broad portfolio of software technology products and solutions, through software-as-a-service (‘SaaS’) and hosted delivery models, to airlines and other travel suppliers, and provides software solutions that help its customers better market, sell, serve, and operate. Its product offerings include reservation systems for full-cost and low-cost carriers, commercial and operations products, agency solutions, and data-driven intelligence solutions.
In 2024, the company launched SabreMosaic, a proprietary offer and order retailing platform for airlines that is designed and built on a modular and open technology structure, enabling airlines to dynamically create, sell, and deliver an array of personalized content to travelers. Its reservation systems bring together intelligent decision support solutions that enable end-to-end retailing. The company's commercial and operations products offer services to its customers to enable them to better use its products and help optimize their commercial and operations platforms.
Hospitality Solutions
The company's Hospitality Solutions business provides software and solutions, through SaaS and hosted delivery models, to hoteliers around the world. Its SaaS solutions empower hotels and hotel chains to manage pricing, reservations, and retail offerings across thousands of distribution channels while improving guest experience throughout the traveler journey. The company serves over 40,000 properties in over 175 countries.
Growth Strategy
The company is a technology company focused on four strategic areas: generating positive free cash flow, achieving sustainable long-term growth, driving innovation and enhancing its value propositions, and the continued modernization of its technology.
The company's growth strategy includes enhancing relationships with customers by promoting the benefits to them and travelers of adopting additional products and services, adapting those products to the changing needs of the travel ecosphere, including integrating new distribution capability (‘NDC’), and pricing them in ways that align with its customers, growing its customer base by continuing to innovate its products, adding desirable content, and aligning its technology and personnel to best highlight its value proposition globally, and expanding opportunities by extending its product lines into closely related areas of travel.
Customers
The company's Travel Solutions customers consist of travel suppliers, including airlines, hotels, and other lodging providers, car rental brands, rail carriers, cruise lines, tour operators, attractions, and services; a network of travel buyers, including OTAs, offline travel agencies, TMCs, and corporate travel departments; and airports, governments, and tourism boards. Airlines served by Travel Solutions vary in size and are located in every region of the world, and include hybrid carriers and low-cost carriers (‘LCCs’) (collectively, ‘LCC/hybrids’), global network carriers, and regional network carriers. Its airline and agency customers are in various phases of adopting NDC strategies, and those strategies vary by customer. Hospitality Solutions has a global customer base of over 40,000 hotel properties of all sizes.
Sources of Revenue
Transactions—The company's Travel Solutions business generates distribution revenue for bookings made through its global distribution system (‘GDS’) (e.g., air, car, and hotel bookings) and through its partners, and generally it is paid directly by the travel supplier. A transaction occurs when a travel agency or corporate travel department books or reserves a travel supplier’s product using its GDS, for which it receives a fee. Transaction fees include, but are not limited to, transaction fees paid by travel suppliers for selling their inventory through its GDS and fees paid by travel agency subscribers related to their use of certain solutions integrated with its GDS. The company receives revenue from the travel supplier and the travel agency according to the commercial arrangement with each.
SaaS and Hosted—The company generates Travel Solutions' IT Solutions revenue and Hospitality Solutions revenue through upfront solution implementation fees and recurring usage-based fees for the use of its software solutions hosted on secure platforms or deployed via SaaS. It maintains its SaaS and hosted software and manages the related infrastructure with the assistance of third-party providers. The company collects the implementation fees and recurring usage-based fees pursuant to contracts with terms that typically range between three and ten years and generally include minimum annual volume requirements.
Software Licensing—The company generates Travel Solutions' IT Solutions revenue from fees for the on-site installation and use of its software products. Many contracts under this model generate additional revenue for the maintenance of the software product.
Professional Service Fees—The company generates Travel Solutions' IT Solutions revenue and Hospitality Solutions revenue through offerings that utilize the SaaS and hosted revenue model, which are sometimes sold as part of multiple performance obligation arrangements for which it also provides professional services, including consulting services. Its professional services are primarily focused on helping customers achieve better utilization of and return on their software investment. Often, it provides these services during the implementation phase of its SaaS solutions.
Media and Retailing—The company generates Hospitality Solutions revenue from customers that advertise their website or booking engine on digital marketing channels. It also generates Hospitality Solutions revenue through retailing offerings and is typically paid a portion of the value of each transaction according to commercial arrangements.
Government Regulation
The company is subject to the application of data protection and privacy regulations in many of the U.S. states and countries in which it operates, including the General Data Protection Regulation (‘GDPR’) in the EU.
The company is also subject to prohibitions administered by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (the ‘OFAC rules’) and other similar global prohibitions, as applicable.
Seasonality
Travel bookings and the revenue the company derives from those bookings are typically seasonally strong in the first and third quarters, but decline significantly each year in the fourth quarter, primarily in December. The company recognizes air-related revenue at the date of booking, and because customers generally book their November and December holiday leisure-related travel earlier in the year, and business-related travel declines during the holiday season, revenue resulting from bookings is typically lower in the fourth quarter. Similarly, the company experiences seasonality in its cash flow from operations, with the first quarter lower in collections, reflecting the revenue generated in December, and higher cash outflows with annual compensation and incentive consideration payments for the previous year (year ended December 31, 2024).
History
Sabre Corporation, a Delaware corporation, was founded in 2006. The company was incorporated in 2006.