Sabre opens office in Moscow

Sabre Holdings has opened an office in Moscow as part of its plans for expansion across Russia and central Asia.

The office will be staffed by two of the company’s businesses, Sabre Travel Network and Sabre Airline Solutions, offering products for travel agencies and operational, decision-support and reservation technology to airlines across the region.

Tom Klein, group president of Sabre Travel Network and Sabre Airline Solutions, said the company considers Russia and central Asia as huge growth areas for the travel and tourism industry.

Klein said, “The amount of travel being booked has grown by 14 percent in just one year. We expect sales of air travel alone to more than double in Russia between now and the end of the decade, as continued prosperity in the region boosts demand for domestic, regional and international travel even further.”

Sabre Travel Network recently upgraded the reservation system used by nearly 6,000 Aeroflot-affiliated travel agents in more than 3,000 locations in Russia and elsewhere around the world.

In another development, Sabre Airline Solutions has implemented technology from Microsoft to accelerate development and deployment for the next generation of the Sabre Streamline Resource Management Suite.

The new smart-client application combines the best of Microsoft’s newest technology and design approaches using Visual Studio 2005 and the 2.0 .Net Framework with the Streamline suite’s industry-leading resource management solution, which is utilised by more than 40 airlines, ground handling agents, airports and government agencies worldwide, stated the company.

Pradeep Rathinam, Microsoft's general manager of ISVs in the United States, said, “Sabre Airline Solutions has capitalised on the opportunity to gain early insight into the development and delivery of solutions utilising Visual Studio 2005 and the .Net Framework.”

Steve Clampett, president of Airline Products and Services at Sabre Airline Solutions said, “Through the relationship with Microsoft, we were able to accelerate delivery of the hand-held wireless solution.”

Clampett continued: “This solution ensures rapid, accurate and well-organised communication between field personnel and supervisors managing airport resources that service the airline’s passengers. Reacting to changes in the schedule must be supported by robust decision-support solutions and rich, yet cost-effective, communication channels. This mobile solution enables airport customer service and ramp staff to be proactive in responding to day-of-operation changes in the flight schedule and have valuable information at their fingertips.”

In addition to business solution applications, Sabre Airline Solutions will work closely with Microsoft in 2006 to rapidly adopt the latest 2.0 .Net Framework tools and capabilities. Through subsequent product releases in 2006, Sabre Airline Solutions will evolve the suite to leverage smart-client technology and implement BizTalk Server 2006 for ease of system integration when implementing the Streamline suite with customers' existing third-party systems.