Travel Industry Interview with Kurt Ekert, President of Sabre

(23 Mar 2022, 11:42 +07)  As many countries gradually begin to scrap or reduce travel restrictions and testing requirements put in place to curb the spread of the ongoing COVID19 pandemic, the travel industry is becoming more and more optimistic that recovery is finally within reach.

One of the most important components of the travel industry ecosystem is Sabre. Based in Texas, the company employees approximately 9,000 people, has offices around the world, processes over 12 billion shopping requests annually, and is at the forefront of distribution and travel retail technology.

With so much data being processed by its systems, Sabre is one of the first to see the latest trends, not only on a global scale but also within domestic and local markets around the world.

Kurt Ekert, President of Sabre

To learn more about what is currently happening within the travel industry, Steven Howard of TravelNewsAsia.com speaks with Sabre's President, Kurt Ekert, who officially joined the company from CWT on 3 January 2022.

In this interview, filmed over Zoom on 22/23 March 2022, Kurt tells us what forward bookings and trends Sabre is seeing within the airline and hotel sector, domestically within different markets as well as on a global scale.

We discuss how the booking process seems to have changed, whether airlines have used the downtime to revise and upgrade their distribution strategies, and what role Kurt believes NDC will play in the future as the technology develops and matures further.

Kurt tells us about Sabre's partnership with Google, the importance of AI and quantum technology, and what excites him most about what Sabre Labs is currently developing.

We talk about Sabre's assets, including the sale of its airline operations business to CAE, and Steven asks why the company is selling one of the two buildings which currently make up its Southlake HQ, and what other assets it plans to offload this year and next.

Kurt also shares Sabre's policy with regards to recruitment, hybrid and remote working, and what plans the company has to expand its employee numbers and presence in China. All that and much, much more in the video and podcast below.

Travel Industry Interview with Kurt Ekert, President of Sabre

PODCAST

Editor's note: As the above video interview was conducted over the internet, I would like to apologise that the audio and visual quality are not up to the same HD/UHD quality that they normally would be. Hopefully it won't be too long until we are once again conducting exclusive video interviews in person, but for now we have to make do with what we have. Thank you.