Question

Visit the Amadeus or Travelport website and compare their products and services with Sabre’s. What are the differences and similarities?

Answer 1

The globalization of the travel sector has proved to be baboon to the customers, who can now book or access their travel requirements from any part of the world by sitting in their homes. All these have been made possible by the introduction of the global distribution system(GDS). By this system, the operation with the third party booking agents regarding flight booking, hotel reservation, and car rentals have become quite easier and economical. Amadeus and Sabre are the two types of GDS. These GDS are connected to the main GDS, which has information about all the airlines.

While going through the websites of both the GDS, we observe that more or less there are doing the same thing i.e.

1. Providing a platform using different software to sell economic airlines ticket, hotel reservations as well as booking car rentals.

2. Both the GDS are linked with travel agents all around the globe, to provide cheap, best service and helps them to earn maximum revenues.

Although they are providing the same service, by employing somewhat different techniques.  Their ways of providing the services are different in the following ways-

1. Amadeus is the largest GDS, but it is not so widely used in America. Whereas, Sabre is very popular and commonly used in America. It is more user friendly than Amadeus and more travel agents prefer to use this platform as they provide many other options of flights, hotels, tours e.t,c.

2. Both the GDS are connected with different types of airlines. Sabre is mainly connected with airlines operating from the USA, whereas Amadeus is mainly connected with airlines from the European continent.

3. Both of them use different customer portals and called it by different names.

4. Their PNR numbers are also different. Amadeus uses an alphanumeric system,  whereas Sabre uses alphabetical letters in PNR.

5. Sabre uses more latest technology than Amadeus and so it is faster than Amadeus.

In this way, both are useful GDS, but their country of origin and way of operations are different .