Abundance of booking systems are hurting agency operations

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In travel—like in most other walks of life—there is such a thing as ‘too much of a good thing.’ A recent report published by Sabre argues that the abundance of booking systems (something that “agents of yesteryear could have only dreamed of!”) is taking a toll on travel agency operations. The survey found that, shockingly, 91% of agencies use four or more unaffiliated booking systems. Further, more than half of agencies reported using seven or more systems and over 10% now manage 10 or more booking systems. This “sprawl,” according to Sabre “is directly impacting productivity, profitability and agent satisfaction.” What’s worse: The number of systems used by advisors continues to grow. Rather than consolidating these extra content sources to streamline operations, agencies are instead adding systems to gain access to more content. Specifically, over 70% of agencies reported growth in system count over the past three years. (This number is 77% in APAC and “only” 53% in the Americas.)

“Our clients expect a seamless experience. Fragmentation threatens that expectation – it can lead to missing content, inconsistent information, and, ultimately, a loss of trust.” — Survey respondent at a TMC in Argentina

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More than three-quarters of respondents said they use the GDS, supplier-managed portals, in-house proprietary booking systems and third-party content aggregators. Despite opting to use all of these systems, more than half of responding agencies said that using multiple systems leads to unwanted complexity, drives up operational costs, creates inconsistent customer experiences, slows the onboarding of new advisors, contributes to advisor frustration and more. Even APIs—which Sabre calls “a modern, ‘lightweight’ way to connect to content”—are becoming overused. Nearly two-thirds of agencies have increased API integrations over the past three years and over half of all agencies claim managing multiple API connections has become a burden. Again, APAC has the highest proportion of agencies with 10 or more APIs.

Sabre’s Response to Fragmentation

As a response to these mounting challenges, Sabre has introduced SabreMosaic Travel Marketplace, which “brings together the industry’s widest breadth of travel content in one place, with built-in AI efficiencies and flexible connectivity.” This “modern, cloud-native, and content-agnostic marketplace” supports Offer- and Order-based workflows.

“AI can be a double-edged sword. It helps me keep up with fragmented content across platforms, but it also contributes to the noise.” – Survey respondent at a travel agency in Australia

Benefits of the SabreMosaic Travel Marketplace, according to Sabre, include:

• The industry’s broadest content portfolio—currently leading with 38 NDC airlines, 2-plus million lodging options, and 70-plus car and rail providers—accessed through a single connection.
• AI capabilities to surface relevant content faster, automate key booking and servicing workflows, and help agencies convert more efficiently across air, hotel, car and rail.
• Enterprise-grade reliability through a cloud-native architecture, with modular integration and auto-scaling to support high-volume transactions.

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