Launching in Greece – Sabre enables the creation of apps to inspire travel and provide instant search results.
SOUTHAKE, TEXAS / ATHENS – Searching for travel in Greece is set to change. Today, Sabre launches a collection of APIs that will radically change the travel experience by engaging and inspiring travellers right at the start of their search.
Available from Sabre’s open developer platform, Sabre Dev Studio, the new APIs can be used by developers from travel companies, online travel sites, meta search, and the social, retail and startup sector, to create, offer and inspire unique travel search experiences on mobile or websites.
Using Sabre’s new APIs, companies can offer travellers the ability to start their search with questions such as: “What beach destinations can I fly to for five days within my budget of 500 euros?” Or “I’d like to go to Santorini for three days in March, what are the cheapest travel dates?” Travellers that know their dates can ask: ”I’m interested in flying to London the week of 20 October, is this a busy time to travel and are fares higher or lower compared to what others paid recently?” Once the request is made, travel options and results are provided instantly.
This new way of searching meets changing consumer behaviours. Online and mobile travel purchases are growing rapidly around the world and research shows consumers visit an average of 10 websites while making travel plans. This represents a significant opportunity for companies to improve the user experience and make it more intuitive, personalized and natural, driving higher conversion, repeat business and customer loyalty.
“Today, most travellers begin their travel search by naming their origin and destination, and wait as a sand timer rotates for shopping options to return,” said Harald Eisenaecher, senior vice president, Sabre Travel Network, Europe, Middle East and Africa. “Today’s travellers want to be inspired, they want their consumer experience to be easy and intuitive when shopping for travel – they want to dream. We’re thrilled that our customers in Greece are among the first countries in Europe to access Sabre’s latest resources to reinvent travel.”
Sabre’s APIs leverage big data and rich shopping information captured from the Sabre travel marketplace. This data includes billions of pre-computed flight options and prices. Patent-pending technology continually captures shopping data while intelligently keeping the data refreshed to ensure a high level of reliability. The new REST APIs leverage this data to deliver advanced shopping and intelligence services with sub second responses.
Examples of new REST APIs and services now available:
- Shopping services: for travellers still in the research phase, inspirational shopping APIs enable the creation of apps that will search hundreds of different airports across a broad range of alternate date combinations, by budget or theme. This allows consumers to quickly perform a search such as, “I want a five day beach holiday in January, where can I go?” For travellers that know where and when they want to travel, an instant shopping API provides immediate responses with up to 300 options for the specified origin, destination and dates.
- Intelligence services: intelligence APIs provide travel insights to complement the shopping process and help drive conversions. These APIs can be used to help answer questions like “Is this is a busy time of year to travel to this destination?” or “Am I getting a good deal with this fare based on what others recently paid?”
- Informational services: a collection of market insights and historical data services that can be used by agencies to power and improve their business and marketing programs. Examples include using recent shopping data to provide tailored offers to travellers who previously visited the website but did not book.
Sabre Dev Studio already offers more than 150 application programming interfaces (APIs) that enable the travel community to build apps that move the world. Testing tools, documentation, prototypes and sample code, and additional resources are available from Sabre on this open developer platform.
Theodore is the Co-Founder and Managing Editor of TravelDailyNews Media Network; his responsibilities include business development and planning for TravelDailyNews long-term opportunities.
