Sabre Corporation, a global technology provider to the travel and tourism industry, has become the first marketplace to offer automated Round the World (RTW) and Circle Trip (CT) airfares – those that start and end in the same destination, but include more than one stopover.

Developed in collaboration with global airline alliance, SkyTeam and Airline Tariff Publishing Company (ATPCO), the new industry standard for purchasing RTW and CT fares helps reduce administrative costs associated with updating and managing RTW products, said a report in the Gulf Daily News (GDN), our sister publication.

Until now, when booking multi-destination RTW itineraries for travellers, agents had to manually add up the prices of each segment of a passenger’s journey.

New Sabre technology automates this process, providing a complete fare price to the agent for the passenger’s entire journey.

Agencies will also benefit from reduced Agency Debit Memo costs (ADMs), sent by airlines when there is a discrepancy between the fare offered and the airline’s published price.

This new capability will be immediately available for SkyTeam’s Go Round the World and Go Round Asia and Southwest Pacific fares.

“Booking RTW tickets has been a pain-point for airlines and agencies for some time, and a challenge we have been eager to help solve,” Bahrain-based Sabre Travel Network ME chief executive Daniel Naoumovitch said.

“Using our latest technology and working alongside ATPCO and SkyTeam, Sabre has established a new industry standard for purchasing RTW itineraries that makes it easier and more efficient for everyone involved.

“SkyTeam is a great first alliance to have on board and we fully expect this new standard to drive more RTW fares for carriers,” he added.

According to SkyTeam vice-president for sales and marketing Mauro Oretti, building an industry-approved, standardised framework for automated RTW fares has been much needed for some time.

“We are proud to be the first alliance to automate these types of fares for agents using the Sabre GDS.

“We know that our partners in the travel agent community appreciate automated faring, especially on tickets such as these, which is why we are pleased to make this a reality.” - TradeArabia News Service