As Sabre continues to innovate and adapt to evolving industry requirements, its role in shaping the future of corporate travel remains pivotal.
Janice Alyosius
In corporate travel management, the integration of seamless, efficient technology solutions plays a crucial role in enhancing the travel experience for corporates. Samuel Machado, Managing Director, India, Sabre, articulates the critical aspects of corporate travel portals and the underlying technology infrastructure that supports them.
“Corporate travellers depend heavily on accessing hotel and airline content that caters specifically to their needs,” Machado said, highlighting the fundamental requirement for personalised and efficient travel solutions. “If someone is travelling on business, they expect a portal that is not only quick and efficient but also provides information tailored to their preferences,” he added.
Machado said the vital role of corporate travel portals, which leverage Global Distribution Systems (GDSs) and content aggregators to streamline and personalise the booking experience. “These portals sit right atop our content aggregators, facilitating a seamless interaction between the corporate tools and our extensive travel content,” he further said.
Choosing the right corporate booking tool, according to Machado, is crucial. “The overlay corporate booking tool must efficiently utilise the comprehensive distribution platform underneath,” he asserted. This platform not only ensures access to a wide array of hotels and airlines but also encompasses full-service carriers, low-cost carriers, and the latest New Distribution Capability (NDC) content from airlines.
“We treat the corporate clients as discerning consumers of our content. Our goal is to provide them with customisable, efficient, and readily available content that meets their specific travel needs,” said Machado, while highlighting Sabre’s commitment to enhancing the corporate travel experience through technology-driven solutions that optimise efficiency and convenience.
Underlining how their innovative solutions are shaping the future of corporate travel, Madhavan Kasturi, Head, Global Solution Engineering, Sabre said, “At Sabre, our ethos is not just about generic technology, but making our platform deeply relevant to the specific needs of our travel agency customers. Through solution engineering, we collaborate with travel agencies to understand their growth opportunities, and pain points, and build meaningful solutions tailored to their requirements.”
When asked about how the corporates can leverage Sabre’s offerings to streamline their events and conferences, Kasturi highlighted the pivotal role of technology in modern corporate travel. “There is a lot of corporate travel happening even domestically within India. Despite the increasing reliance on modern technologies such as Teams conferencing or Zoom, the cultural inclination towards face-to-face collaboration remains strong.”
In this evolving corporate travel, Sabre plays a crucial role in facilitating the interactions, “We provide the infrastructure for corporate travel agencies to take the corporate travel product to the corporate consumers. This enables agencies to tailor travel products to individual preferences, ensuring personalised travel experiences and purchase that travel in such a way that it is meaningful for them,” he said. Moreover, Sabre addresses the critical aspect of policy management for corporates. Efficiency in cost management is another key focus for Sabre. Kasturi highlighted, “When a corporate is travelling, or they have a group of people who are travelling, or even when there are individual employees travelling across for large business trips, multi-day trips, or long-distance trips, they want to ensure that they have the best rates available to their employees.”
He added, “We achieve this by sourcing content through various channels and normalising the process for corporate travel agencies. This approach simplifies the booking process and ensures the best rates are available, thus keeping travel budgets efficient. So, it is not just about policy management, it is about efficiency from a corporate point of view, and personalisation from individual traveller’s point of view. We enable all these three things.”
Kasturi also underscored the importance of cybersecurity within corporate travel technology and shared how Sabre meticulously manages this important aspect. “Security is an important and fundamental aspect of technology. We provide core technology that is not only scalable and reliable but also operates 24×7 without failure,” he elaborated, stressing the foundational requirement of security alongside these operational imperatives.
Kasturi also emphasised the importance of security as a foundational element in technology infrastructure, particularly in Saber, “Infrastructure technology has to be scalable, reliable, and security is one dimension of a lot of attributes that a solid infrastructure solution should deliver.”
To stay ahead of potential threats, the brand adopts a proactive approach, Kasturi said, “The corporate traveller and travel agencies have a duty of care to their end customers, and to protect the customer data, while making sure that it is not compromised. So, we make sure we are right on top of the game by constantly trying to forecast as to what are the potential vulnerabilities that could impact our platform. We invest not only in advanced technology but also in terms of hackers and who make efforts to simulate a cyber threat environment.”
Collaboration is the key, stressed Kasturi. “We also work with our technology partners such as Google to make sure that we are using the best-in-class architectural frameworks and methodology to make sure that security is comprehensively covered,” he said.
The impact of these efforts extends beyond mere compliance, it alleviates concerns for Sabre’s customers, the airlines and travel agencies. “Our customers do not have to worry about security because we have got this aspect well covered as their infrastructure provider,” he said. Beyond the term security, Kasturi highlighted Sabre’s role in nurturing talent within the travel technology sector, particularly in Bengaluru. “We have set up a development centre in the city. More than 300 developers are involved in building our multisource platform,” Kasturi shared.
This initiative not only strengthens brand’s technological capabilities but also contributes to the local ecosystem by fostering a cadre of skilled technologists specialised in the travel domain.
“Corporate travellers depend heavily on accessing hotel and airline content that caters specifically to their needs.”
Samuel Machado Managing Director India, Sabre
“It is not just about policy management, it is about efficiency from a corporate point of view, and personalisation.”
Madhavan Kasturi Head, Global Solution Engineering, Sabre
Infrastructure technology has to be scalable, reliable, and secure to deliver a solid infrastructure solution to the corporate travellers
