Size isn’t everything? Try telling Sabre….
Size may not be everything, but it’s clearly very important to Sabre which is insisting that it – and not Amadeus – has the largest share of travel agency bookings worldwide. At a briefing earlier this week, Sabre’s Chris Kroeger claimed that Sabre had the number one slot “despite everything that my friends in Madrid say to the contrary”. He claimed that Sabre’s global share of GDS air bookings stood at 35%, compared to Amadeus’ 25-27% and accused the Madrid based technology company of “creative math”. According to Sabre, Amadeus is wrongly stripping out bookings made on the Abacus system in the Asia Pacific region. Mr Kroeger said: “These bookings are processed by the Sabre GDS, and contribute to our revenue, so we feel justified in including these in our bookings share numbers.” He added that Amadeus was including in its own figures bookings made by airlines staff whose reservations systems it hosts when they make bookings on other carriers. He said: “We also host the reservation systems of many airlines, but we do not include these bookings in our numbers.” A Sabre spokesman told TravelMole: “We want to set the record straight. We are not saying that Amadeus is being dishonest but they are not comparing apples with apples.” Meanwhile, according to figures given to TravelMole by Sabre, Galileo retains the highest agency booking share in the UK (43%), followed by Sabre (21%), Worldspan (20%) and Amadeus (16%). No one from Amadeus was available for comment.
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