Details of Sabre and Expedia Affiliate Network's New Technology Agreement

handshakeBy Esther Hertzfeld

Sabre Corp. and Expedia Affiliate Network (EAN) have signed a strategic technology agreement in which Expedia Affiliate Network will provide hotel marketing and booking content. The agreement adds tens of thousands of incremental hotel properties into the Sabre travel marketplace, Sabre said.

Tnooz reports that Texas-based Sabre (which has a pretty friendly relationship with Expedia these days after offloading the operational elements of its Travelocity brand in August 2013) currently has around 125,000 properties on its system, so the addition of EAN’s network of hotels could boost that number quite significantly. An official says it will remove duplicates from EAN against its existing properties and no overall figure for what will eventually be made available is known as yet.

EAN will also pilot the ‘ZoomandGo’ app, a map-based hotel shopping and booking solution in the Sabre travel marketplace that will integrate fragmented hotel content into an easy-to-use interface, making comparison shopping easier for travel buyers.  

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“This agreement is a big win for travel buyers,” said Greg Webb, president of Sabre Travel Network, to eTurbo News. “Travel agencies will have more hotel options to present their customers and in addition, more hotels in the Sabre travel marketplace will have the ability to merchandise their products, property attributes and personalized offerings to travelers.”  

Through the ZoomandGo app, available to travel agents in the Sabre Red app centre, EAN will have access to an extensive network of travel buyers who will leverage a wealth of data including, advanced map-based search capabilities to search any destination in the world by street address, neighborhood, airport code and local attractions. In addition, travel buyers can instantly sort search results by chain code, price, amenity and many other criteria to find the perfect hotel quickly.  

“Expedia Affiliate Network is pleased to be working with Sabre and believe its expansive travel marketplace paired with the various ways Sabre provides hoteliers to differentiate themselves will be powerful for travel buyers,” Wendy Aird, VP sales, AMER. We’re excited to see all the benefits of the ZoomandGo app in action – it will make the travel shopping experience even more dynamic and interactive.”