Sabre and Gulf Air Boost Middle East Presence with New Joint Venture

Sabre and Gulf Air have signed an agreement to create a joint venture to be based in Bahrain. The establishment of this new company, Sabre Travel Network Middle East, brings together a leading global distribution system (GDS) and the local expertise of Gulf Air to further extend world class products and services into the Middle East region. Sabre will have a majority ownership in the new business.

The agreement includes a five-year contract with Sabre Airline Solutions for the SabreSonic suite of products for passenger management, as well as additional operational software and consulting services from Sabre Airline Solutions.

Gulf Air and Sabre Travel Network have had a marketing partnership for nearly 15 years. The joint venture gives Sabre a stronger presence in the Middle East through Gulf Air, an influential local partner and an established regional carrier which as the national airline of Abu Dhabi, Bahrain and Oman, enjoys complete support from its owning governments. The venture will provide technology services, bookable travel products and distribution services for travel agencies, corporations and travel suppliers in the region.

"The immense challenges facing the airline industry today require a concerted collaborative effort with specialist partners in both the public and private sectors," said James Hogan President and Chief Executive of Gulf Air. "Sabre's innovative business and technology solutions make them a partner of choice in meeting our requirements and addressing the constant challenges of the competitive market. At the same time, Gulf Air’s regional network and strong historic and geographic ties in the region will enable us to further leverage the services we offer".

Tom Klein, Sabre Holdings Senior Vice President and Group President of Sabre Travel Network and Sabre Airline Solutions, added, “This partnership is another example of the way we can deliver even more value in a growing travel marketplace. We are excited about the opportunity to leverage our global experience, long history of successful supplier and agency relationships, and technology expertise to benefit both travel suppliers and agencies.”

The agreement also expands the relationship between Sabre Airline Solutions and Gulf Air for reservations, scheduling and operational technology to include a new departure control system through the SabreSonic offering and an aircraft provisioning system to streamline its catering operation. Gulf Air will engage the consulting services from Sabre for a major performance improvement exercise to optimise the full commercial advantage from the operational tools and technology the airline is using, including expanded operations decision support technology.

"In the course of our restructuring programme, Sabre's consulting team has worked closely with us to achieve significant revenue enhancement through an ongoing focus on pricing, revenue management and sales and revenue realization," said Hogan.

“For airlines, this means a very collaborative effort to explore the tough challenges, and then leveraging our expertise to help ensure that each carrier has the right mix of technology and marketing services to meet its current and future business objectives, said Klein.

“We are clearly seeing a trend whereby carriers are looking at partnering with a vendor that can offer both breadth and depth of solutions across the airline IT portfolio, including distribution, software, and consulting services; it’s a one-stop shopping concept,” continued Klein. “We are pleased to see Gulf Air select the same path as Aeroflot, the Russian flag-carrier, Air One, the Italian carrier, and Frontier, the US-based carrier - all carriers that have chosen a vendor partnering strategy in the last eight months.”

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