Sabre Travel Network
has revealed more details of some of the British travel agencies who switched to its global distribution system (GDS) in the mass conversion exercise announced earlier this month.

They are Eton Travel, with two branches in Berkshire, and seven more agencies in the UNIGLOBE group.

These eight join Phileas Fogg Travel, two other UNIGLOBE agencies identified earlier this month and four as-yet unidentified businesses to make 15 conversions - the largest single group of new business wins Sabre Travel Network has ever seen in the UK. 

The UNIGLOBE group holds 13th place in the annual Business Travel World (BTW) ranking of the UK’s leading 100 business travel agencies.  Sabre Travel Network will now handle about 70 percent of all UNIGLOBE bookings through 16 of the group’s 24 locations. 

Eton Travel is also in the top half of the BTW rankings.

“These are significant conversions of leading 100 businesses,” said David Brown, Sabre Travel Network’s director for the UK, Ireland and the Nordic region.  “We are particularly pleased to have secured so much business from the UNIGLOBE group.  It underscores our ability to service agencies of varying sizes in both the business and the leisure arenas.”

“We reviewed three GDSs and were impressed with the overall content of the Sabre system, the ease with which its booking platforms can be used and its superior fares product,” said Ken Thompson, Eton Travel’s managing director.  “These factors combined with Sabre Travel Network’s reputation for industry-leading customer service to help make our selection process fairly easy.”

The UNIGLOBE group’s general manager and chief operating officer, Derek Hearl-Maunder, said his members were attracted by Sabre Holdings’ business strategy of securing a commanding presence in every channel of travel distribution - not just the agency channel.

“The cumbersome regulations governing commercial relationships between GDS and travel providers have been stripped away in the US and are on their way out in Europe,” Hearl-Maunder said.  “Sabre Holdings is well positioned as an influential player in this changing world, and this can only benefit our members.” 
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