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by James Robertson.
Original Post: Start of a trend?
Feed Title: Cincom Smalltalk Blog - Smalltalk with Rants
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Feed Description: James Robertson comments on Cincom Smalltalk, the Smalltalk development community, and IT trends and issues in general.
JetBlue Airways Corp. said this week it plans to drop out of the Sabre electronic ticketing system by Jan. 1, a move that could cause other airlines to follow suit.
Bookings on Sabre, the software system operated by Sabre Holdings Corp., account for just 2% of JetBlue's sales, says sales and distribution director Noreen Courtney-Wilds. But sales through Sabre have been the airline's most expensive, while it's keeping costs down by funneling business and leisure travelers through its Web sites, she says. Revenue from ticket sales through Jetblue.com and a corporate travel Web site launched in June accounted for 75% of JetBlue's third-quarter sales.
Hmm. Later in the same article I found out that Southwest was part of Sabre - I had thought they weren't. Apparently, Sabre (and the competing Galileo) charge something like $5 per segment booked - so a round trip to Europe from where I live might end up throwing $20 at Sabre when the Cincom travel agency books it. That's a significant cost. The article notes that Sabre and Galileo intend to go ahead with their annual price hikes.
I guess the question is, is JetBlue a harbinger of things to come, or a one-off? On the one hand, pulling out of a system like Sabre early means that corporate travel services are less likely to find your flights; it's unlikely that an agent is going to bother juggling 3 or 4 (or more) different travel systems. on the other hand, being able to drop your prices by doing so could give you an edge. It'll be interesting to see how this goes - will more airlines jump, and will Sabre realize that they might be facing immediate disintermediation?
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