Posted on 05/06/2023 11:58:30 AM PDT by Cronos
Sabre is cutting 15 percent of its workforce, part of an effort to save $200 million annually.
Sabre previously reported that it had employed nearly 7,500 people at the end of 2022.
The announcement came during an earnings call Thursday morning, the first for Kurt Ekert since he was named CEO in March.
came during an earnings call Thursday morning, the first for Kurt Ekert since he was named CEO in Mar
"I am confident that these actions will better position us for the future and put us on a direct path to achieving our financial and strategic targets.”
The majority of the job cuts will take place before the end of the second quarter, the result of an effort to streamline the layers of the company’s management and employee base, according to Mike Randolfi, chief financial officer for Sabre.
The company expects to save $100 million in the second half of this year and save $200 million annually beginning in 2024.
The Texas-based company provides operational software and distribution services to travel agencies, airlines, and hotels.
The job cuts are part of an overall move to increase operational efficiencies, which will also include an evaluation of the company’s real estate footprint, though executives did not share more about what may happen on that front. The company previously reported that it had 59 offices worldwide at the end of 2022.
Sabre expects to achieve positive cash flow this year for the first time post-pandemic, with a target of reaching more than $500 million in cash flow in 2025. That number was negative $91 million last quarter, versus negative $156 million in the first quarter of 2022.
(Excerpt) Read more at skift.com ...
Never heard of this company.
How in the world has Sabre managed to stay in business all these years?
Many decades ago, the travel departments in my companies used Sabre to book my travel reservations. Then, along came the Internet and companies got rid of their travel departments.
If you ever booked an airline ticket, Sabre was probably used at some point.
There’s going to be tons of rightsizing. There is over employment at this time. A good percentage of employees cost businesses more than they produce. As inflation makes doing business more expensive, the weakest links will be chopped. Hopefully, this doesn’t get too political and productive, non-woke employees are not hacked from businesses.
If you can stand George clooney check out a flick called “Up in the Air”.....all about corporate downsizing, and what happens to Clooneys’ character at the end was very satisfying.
I guess they were spun off from American Airlines.
FYI- they were the reason Braniff went bankrupt in the 80’s. All the travel agents used Sabre. AA flights preferentially showed up first on their queue. The bums got away with it.
I’ve booked plenty of airline tickets never used them. Not once
It’s transparently being used behind the scenes. Over 225 airlines around the world use it. A long time ago, pre-internet, I think there was an interface to Sabre via CompuServe that people could use it directly.
If a company can afford to slice fifteen percent of its workforce maybe they were being a little slack on the bottom line?
That’s not entirely true, I owned a travel agency for nearly 10 years when agencies sold the overwhelming majority of all airline tickets.
We did not use Sabre, we started out using System One from Eastern/Continental Airlines, then switched to Amadeus.
Showing up first in the reservation system was not an overwhelming choice of traveling public.
The first choice almost always was price, followed by direct versus flights requiring a change of planes.
The standard commission on airlines for travel agencies was 10% of the base ticket price.
What airlines would do is pay an override commission back to dollar one if you exceeded their market share in a given market, especially if you could move real volume to the airline.
For example in the market we operated in Delta had a 27% market share, if you sold 28% you got a 1% override commission back to dollar one, and if you sold more you got a progressively larger commission, if you sold more 32% or more you might get upwards of 6% extra commission paid out quarterly.
The agency we owned was small and we sold around 1.2 million in airline tickets annually, if we sold $300,000 in Delta a year and got the full 6% in extra commission or $18,000 that was a nice bonus during the year.
What did the airlines in was poor management, cut throat competition and union troubles, which is what happened to Eastern Airlines.
When I was a travel agent, most airlines had their own booking system.
Since we were closest to St. Louis, we used PARS which was the TWA system.
When TWA went bankrupt, we went with the Apollo system which was United, I believe.
I heard that Sabre was very good, but was glad not to use it because it was American airlines.
American was notoriously hard to work with for travel agents.
That’s right, the system travel agents used was the same as the system the airlines were using in terms of booking and boarding passes, back when paper tickets were universal.
The travel agency I owned was a franchise, the franchise negotiated the reservation system agreements and override commission agreements that we used.
We had no choice, when we bought the franchise, it came with System One which was Eastern/Continental airlines, later we switched to Amadeus which was basically a follow on for System One.
When someone walked into our agency as wanted a ticket San Francisco or anywhere else from Jacksonville, Fl we could immediately tell them the lowest price and conditions to get that price.
If they were genuinely interested, we could look for availability for that price based on when they wanted to leave and arrive.
We were authorized to sell tickets on any airline in the world that had automated airline ticketing.
We sold tickets on every domestic airline and most international airlines.
International tickets paid a standard 11% commission, some would pay more if you could move volume to them.
We had one customer that had a lot of business in Brazil, Varig is their national airline, this customer flew their employees business class to Brazil, after selling a few tickets the Varig sales representative called us and said, when we booked a ticket to call him, he could upgrade the ticket to first class at no additional charge to the customer and pay us 24%, which was a nice commission on a $2500 ticket.
Back before the internet, that was the only tool available to the general public (through Prodigy - Eaasy Sabre) to compare airline fares. It started off as a unit of American Airlines. Originally targeted at travel agents.
According to this it was also available on Compuserv
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/travelbuzz/1122809-eaasy-sabre-easysabre.html
Delta had a competing product for travel agents that never really caught on. And there was a third product, also aimed at travel agents from another airline.
They’ve been around for decades. I know because I was in high end hotel upper management for 25 years
Great reservations systems in the 1980s.
They started the first big internet site for reserving airlines and hotels. I believe it became Travelocity.
See my #15 post
And 10% on hotel rates.
As a hotel account back then I remember travel agencies were notorious for not cashing checks. Longest list of outstanding checks among any accounts we had.
American Express Travel franchises were the worst.
Side story...I found many fake agencies set up by hotel employees to scam. They’d make up an IATA number and PO address.
I always found them.
Oops, hotel accountant
All these announced lay-offs but few ever show up in the unemployment numbers. I guess the employees all immediately find jobs elsewhere.
Sabre has never been the same since that printer fire, years ago.
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