Religious and humanitarian travel specialist Raptim Intercontinental
has signed a five-year contract to use the Sabre
global distribution system (GDS). 
The agency is based in Tilburg, The Netherlands, but has offices in 20 countries.  It recently completed a restructuring exercise during which it reduced its worldwide GDS support from four providers to two.

The company is experiencing significant growth and wants to standardise the systems it uses in all its offices around the world. Raptim chief executive Jacques Samain said more effective use of management information systems would play an important role in improving efficiencies across Raptim Intercontinental’s global operation.

“Our customers tend to be less tied to a single central location than other travellers”, he said. “The result is that we may have their travel information stored on several GDSs, depending on where they were last based.  This move will help us to start consolidating this information in a more efficient way than we were able to do before.”

Sabre’s compatibility with Raptim International’s back-office system was a significant factor in the agency’s decision to contract with the GDS, as were Sabre’s e-commerce products and global presence.

“Many of our customers need to book or change their travel arrangements at short notice, and having our services available online is an important part of our overall offering”, Samain said.

Raptim has already converted its Danish office from Galileo to Sabre.  Conversions are expected to be complete in Italy by February and across Latin America by the end of the year.

Related stories on ITN:

(23/12/2002) Air China Chooses Sabre for Advanced Flight Scheduling Tools

(18/12/2002) Sabre Solution Selected for Security Services

(17/12/2002) Sabre Holdings Provides Financial Projections for 2002 and 2003

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