Sabre Travel Solutions, Central and Western Africa has introduced new products into the market that will further enhance the performances of its clients around the world.
This is as the company over the weekend in Lagos renewed its agreement with Touchdown Travel for another five years.
Speaking at the Customer Engagement with the management team of Touchdown Travels, Allen Awosikunde, Senior Vice President, Sabre, said that as a progressive company, it consistently engages with its clients to monitor their growth, advise on new opportunities, introduce latest technologies and applications.
Some of the new products unveiled at the engagement meeting included Content Services for Lodging, Sabre Central, Automation Hub, Agency Retailer, New Airline Storefront and Sabre Virtual Payments.
These products, Awosikunde said, would further improve the services of travel agents to their clients, adding that some of its agencies were yet to tap into its existing products, but assured that with such engagements, clients would get to know more about its numerous packages.
He said: “Customer engagement is what we do regularly with our premium agencies. It is to evaluate their performance and discuss the development in the industry and to see how we can improve the business for them so that they can be less prone to fraud, mistakes, Agency Debit Memo (ADM) and others. We do this regularly in order to have a seamless process.
“We divided some of the products into four parts; partial use, not using at all, new products and intending new products. The fact is that people think making reservations and bookings are all they do, but it goes beyond that.
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“When you issue a Passenger Name Record (PNR) to a traveller, the journey is not complete until the passenger travels and returns. Sabre stands out in post-booking automation. What we are trying to sell to them today is to tell them that what everyone can do is not an edge; what is an edge is what only you can do, which others can’t do.”
Also, Tajudeen Balogun, the Agency Manager, Touchdown Travels, commended the Sabre team for the engagement, saying that the agency learnt new techniques from the interaction.
Balogun explained that Sabre has some new products that were not known to its clients, but emphasised that with more engagements with clients, its products would be more popular, while its market share of the travel technology would climb.
Balogun insisted that Sabre was the best among the Global Distribution Systems (DGS) in the world and appealed to its management to continue to increase publicities about its products.
He said the agency renewed its contract with Sabre as a result of values the company has added to its services and growth over the years.
“Sabre has the best GDS in the entire world; product-wise, Sabre is up there and with the renewal of the contract, we are just trying to renew our commitment to Sabre. Tochdown Travels has always been Sabre before now and the contract renewal gives us a whole lot of edge, more commitment to tell Sabre that we are back, better and we are going to do everything possible to turnaround the situation in terms of increased productivity.
“Sabre has a lot of fantastic products, but they are not blowing their trumpet. I will still implore Sabre to try as much as possible to blow their trumpet and let everyone know the products they have. If you understand the products available, you will be able to put them to use. If you don’t know that such a product exists, there is no way you can increase productivity.”
Earlier, Emmanual Ishola, Vice President One, Sabre, said that Sabre had partnered with Touchdown Travels for over 15 years, stressing that the customer engagement was part of the renewal of its five years contract.
He said that the International Air Transport Association (IATA) also rated Touchdown Travels as the best in the country and expressed delight to work with the agency.
Also, Hannah Ogunsulire, Vice President Two, Sabre, noted that in a bid to maximize revenues, agencies needed to adopt the latest technologies in the industry.
