Sabre Airline Solutions, says record numbers of online travel bookings are being made through its SabreSonic Web Internet booking engine.  During the period 1 January to 31 May more than US$1.5 billion of travel was booked directly with airlines using the powerful tool, averaging more than US$340 million a month. May sales revenue marked a 36 percent increase over the same period in 2004.

In addition to revenue, SabreSonic Web delivered to its airline customers a dramatic increase in the number of actual passenger bookings over the same period last year. May showed a strong increase, 48 percent over last year, while the first five months of 2005 saw more than a 50 percent increase over the same period in 2004. 

Sabre Airline Solutions attributes this growth to a growing trend for air travel to be booked directly on airline websites, as well as increased use by airlines of its online booking engine. Ten airlines have started using SabreSonic Web over the past 18 months.

“The online booking numbers and revenues of our airline customers continue to escalate because of the flexibility and ease of use of our Internet booking engine,” said Gianni Marostica, president of airline passenger solutions for Sabre Airline Solutions. ““Self-service, particularly online, is becoming a measure of an airline’s level of customer-friendliness and travellers are clearly comfortable with booking directly with carriers who offer efficient online booking, check-in and ticket exchanges.”

Large and regional carriers, as well as no-frill airlines, are using the open-systems technology of SabreSonic solutions for their customer-oriented functionality, flexibility, speed and ease of use. The Web component can be purchased as part of the full line-up of SabreSonic solutions or purchased on a stand-alone basis, enabling carriers to take advantage of the Web component regardless of the existing reservations system.
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