Sabre Corporation is a very well-known tech company in the travel industry. It was established in 1960 by American Airlines but in 2000 it was spun off and became an independent entity. Currently, it is a publicly-traded company with its headquarters based in Southlake, Texas, United States. The main goal of the company is to make travelling easier for the customers and offer a personalized travel experience with the help of innovative technology. Sabre has expanded to the Asian market with offices established in Bangalore and Singapore. It also has an office in London, Poland, and a few other places.
Idea Behind Sabre
The idea behind founding Sabre dates back to 1953 when two legendary personas met on a flight. These two people are C.R. Smith, the then President of American Airlines, and Blair Smith, an IBM salesman. When they were travelling, they came up with the concept of the semi-automatic business research environment concept, i.e., Sabre. This new concept that they came up with was based on SAGE (Semi-Automatic Ground Environment) which was the first-ever major system to use interactive real-time computing. This SAGE system was developed by IBM for military purposes. So, with the idea based on IBM’s existing concept, American Airlines founded Sabre Corporation in 1960.
Early Days
After the company was founded, Sabre installed its first reservation system in Briarcliff Manor in New York City. This reservation system was comprised of two IBM 7090 mainframe computers. This system was efficient was to processing 84,000 calls per day. In the next few years, Sabre Corporation was completely invested in building the nationwide network and by 1964 it became the largest commercial data processing (real-time) system across the globe. In 1965, the company was handling approximately 7,500 passenger reservations per hour. The Sabre system was relocated to a new centre in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1972, and the system was also upgraded to IBM System/360.
In 1976 Sabre’s journey started in eventually entering the travel sector as the system was installed for the first time in a travel agency. This was very beneficial for the customers because the travel agents would have instant access to flights. Within a year, 130 more locations installed the system for convenience. In 1984, Sabre introduced a new tool called BragainFinder and it was the first-ever automated low-fare searching solution for the industry. In the next year, another product was launched that gave the customers direct access to reserve hotels, airlines, etc. During the end of the decade, the company launched an online travel agency called Travelocity and started a joint venture with Abacus International.
Sabre in the 21st Century
Entering the 21st century, American Airlines spun off Sabre Corporation and became an independent company. Sabre acquired several companies in 2000, namely, Preview Travel, Dillion Communication Systems, Gradient Solutions, and GetThere. In 2001, the company’s airline hardware and communications business was acquired by Electronic Data Systems (EDS). This year it also established Sabre Pacific and acquired Site59 and David R. Bornemann Associates. Some of the other companies that it acquired in the next few years were Showtickets.com, Lastminute.com, Calidris, Flight Explorer, etc.
In 2007, Sabre Corporation was acquired by Texas Pacific Group and Silver Lake Partners. The acquisition continued and in 2012 the company launched Sabre Red App Centre. In 2014, the company went public on NASDAQ. The companies acquired by Sabre after it went public are Abacus International, Trust International, and Airpas Aviation.
Sean Menke – CEO of Sabre Corporation
Sean Menke became the CEO and President of Sabre Corporation in 2016. But currently, he is the CEO and the board member of the company since a new President was appointed. Sean joined the company in 2015 as the President of Sabre Travel Network. Before joining Sabre Corporation, he also played his role as the CEO of Frontier Airlines and Pinnacle Airlines. Sean went to Ohio State University followed by the University of Denver.
Annasha Dey is an NIT student, who apart from studying engineering is also a content writer. She has a great interest in photography, writing, reading novels, and travelling as well. She is a foodie who loves socializing and hanging out with her friends. She is also a trained Kathak dancer and a big fashion enthusiast. Dey also loves watching TV series, which includes F.R.I.E.N.D.S. and Big Bang Theory. To be a better writer she prefers to read more