With a pedigree that goes back to 1960 — when American Airlines and IBM collaborated to launch the world’s first computerised airline reservation system — Sabre Hospitality has been a driving force behind the meeting of hospitality and technology since 2009. A global technology company committed to constantly evolving and expanding capabilities Sabre Hospitality supports and enables its customers to do more and be more. 

Hosted on Google Cloud, Sabre Hospitality interconnects over 900 connectivity partners all around the world, from online travel agencies to property management system providers, revenue management platform providers, customer relationship management system solution providers, and more. Today, Sabre Hospitality’s purpose-built hotel tech solutions are helping hoteliers to thrive in a rapidly evolving, increasingly competitive market defined by new challenges and new opportunities. 

Frank Trampert, Global Chief Commercial Officer at Sabre Hospitality, has seen shifts in the industry like this before. “In the nineties, the Online Travel Agencies came along and changed the industry. Hotels had to rethink how they connected with customers,” he recalls. Within just a few years, Trampert explains that the industry’s thinking had shifted. “Hotels were thinking more holistically about reaching customers all around the world as new technology opened up these new avenues,” he explains. “I see a similar trend now in the context of merchandising as hotels begin to retail their products and services beyond the guest room.” Of course, he adds, placing the many discrete products, services, and experiences a hotel can offer in front of customers in a more holistic and considered way — much like the transition to online booking in the nineties — is both an organisational and technological challenge.

“Think of it like Amazon Prime,” Trampert says. “If you go hiking and you purchase a tent, then a marketplace like Amazon’s will offer you boots and a torch and a stove as well. Merchandising in the hotel space is heading in the same direction.”

Partnering for success with Langham Hospitality Group   

Long-term Sabre Hospitality partner Langham Hospitality Group is one of the hoteliers exploring the potential of offering more than just a night in a room. “Langham has been a fantastic partner to us since 2009,” says Trampert. “Langham currently leverages a comprehensive suite of Sabre solutions — from booking and distribution to call centre. We enable connectivity for Langham to elevate the guest experience while opening up new retail opportunities to drive additional revenue.” 

One of the biggest challenges organisations face in the hospitality sector is that they are operating in a profoundly fragmented marketplace. The industry’s mixture of global chains, luxurious boutique locations, and everything in between reflects the diverse needs and tastes of the customer base. Not only are customers segmented into more discrete niches than ever before by budget, aesthetic, and experiential preferences, but the channels, platforms, and partners used to manage everything from customer relationships to suppliers and property operations also frequently lack interoperability. Disjointed customer experiences, operational inefficiencies, and all the headaches associated with legacy software make it more challenging than ever for hoteliers to deliver cohesive, personalised experiences their guests expect. In addition to the obvious challenges, it makes it harder for hoteliers to build long-lasting relationships with their customers and create the kinds of personalised, luxury services that keep guests coming back. 

Bundling personalised offers

Now, the two companies are working together to bundle personalised offers tailored to guest preferences that increase the net revenue for Langham’s hotels. As Langham’s innovation team looks beyond the refinement of the group’s existing business models, Sabre Hospitality is helping the global hotel brand explore the potential for new business models, including the possibility that a hotel can merchandise or create experiences beyond selling rooms. “It presents some very new and exciting opportunities for hotels to think beyond the guest room,” Trampert enthuses. “Think about all the other services available in a hotel — the gym, the spa, sauna, restaurants, shopping, and so on. What if you could digitise the merchandising of those services and bring them into the booking path.” Sabre Hospitality and Langham’s latest partnership has done just that, integrating services and experiences beyond traditional room sales into the booking engine. 

“We helped to identify categories of services like early check-in, late checkout, experiences in the hotel itself or in the surrounding area.” By driving merchandising, branded products and services revenue, Sabre Hospitality helped Langham-owned luxury hotel brand Cordis realise a 53% lift in sales around experiences, a 46% lift around merchandising, and a 35% lift in services provided in the hotel. 

“The customer can now make that connection and can see these products and services at the time of booking instead of coming to the hotel then being informed in the hotel about what is available,” Trampert explains. “We have built a product called SynXis Insights, and we are utilising these data components to provide highly actionable insights to hotels, to drive more awareness, to be alert earlier on if certain trends do not materialise.”

An industry leading connectivity hub

Looking to the future, Trampert explains that Sabre Hospitality’s continuing goal is to be an industry leading hub for connectivity and distribution with tools and services that make it easy for hotels to execute their strategic objective”. He concludes: “We have a tremendous opportunity to bring all these partners into a digital marketplace that makes it much easier for hotels to interact with us, their suppliers and partners, further removing barriers to delivering cohesive, personalised experiences to their guests.”