Published on Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Sabre to launch travel industry's first B2B app store

Sabre is building what it claims will be the world’s first business-to-business app store for the travel industry.

Scheduled to open in the next few months, the Sabre Red App Centre claims to be the first online marketplace to connect travel buyers, including travel agencies, travel management companies and leisure operators, with third- party developers.

“The Sabre Red App Centre will open up a new world of possibilities for the travel industry and bring endless opportunities for creative and original applications to be brought to the market quickly,” said president of Sabre Travel Network Greg Webb.

“Our agency customers will be able to improve their business and deliver enhanced services for travellers by tapping into the collective creativity of Red App developers from all over the world.”

The Red App Centre will include Sabre-certified Red Apps built by third-party developers, travel buyers and Sabre.

The Red App Centre will connect to the Sabre Red Workspace launched last year for travel agents to book and manage business and leisure travel.

As a result, travel buyers will be able to shop for a range of apps then deploy those applications down to the individual user.

The selected Red Apps become part of the agent’s workspace, leveraging the administrative controls and plug-in capabilities of the Eclipse Rich Client Platform, upon which the Red Workspace is built.

Developers will use the Sabre Red App Developer Toolkit to create the Red Apps.

“Every year, Sabre invests hundreds of millions of dollars and works closely with more than 130 authorised developers to research and develop new products that help our customers compete and win in a complex industry,” said Webb.

“Creating an online B2B marketplace will spur a whole new level of innovation for the benefit of Sabre- connected agencies globally.”

By Linsey McNeill