Public | |
Traded as | NASDAQ: SABR |
Industry |
Travel technology Travel services |
Founded | 1960 |
Headquarters | Southlake, Texas, United States |
Key people
|
Sean Menke, CEO & President Larry Kellner, Chairman Rick Simonson, CFO |
Products | TripCase GetThere Sabre Airline Solutions Sabre Travel Network Sabre Hospitality Solutions |
Revenue | US$3.37 billion (2016) |
US$459.57 million (2016) | |
US$242.56 million (2016) | |
Total assets | US$5.72 billion (2016) |
Total equity | US$625.61 million (2016) |
Number of employees
|
Around 10000 (2016) |
Website | www.sabre.com |
Sabre Corporation is a travel technology company based in Southlake, Texas. It is the largest Global Distribution Systems provider for air bookings in North America.American Airlines founded the company in 1960, and it was spun off in 2000. Texas Pacific Group and Silver Lake Partners acquired Sabre in 2007. Sabre began publicly trading on the NASDAQ in 2014.
Sabre Hospitality Solutions, an IT solutions provider, is the company's largest growing division.
In 1953, C.R. Smith, the president of American Airlines, met Blair Smith, an IBM salesman, on a flight and developed the Sabre (the Semi-Automatic Business Research Environment) concept. The system was based on SAGE, the first major system to use interactive real-time computing IBM developed for military use. Sabre Corporation was founded in 1960 by American Airlines. Sabre Corporation installed the first Sabre reservation system in Briarcliff Manor, New York that year. The system consisted of two IBM 7090 mainframe computers and processed 84,000 calls per day.
In 1964, Sabre's nationwide network was completed and became the largest commercial real-time data-processing system in the world. Sabre Corporation handled 7500 passenger reservations per hour in 1965. The Sabre system upgraded to IBM S/360 and moved to a new center in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1972. In 1976, the Sabre system was installed into a travel agency for the first time. This allowed travel agents to have instant access to flights. By the end of the year, 130 locations installed the Sabre system. Sabre introduced BargainFinder, the industry's first automated low-fare search capability, in 1984. The following year, easySabre was launched. It gave consumers with personal computers access to the Sabre system to make airline, hotel and car rental reservations.
In 1996, the company launched Travelocity, an online travel agency. Sabre formed a joint venture with Abacus International in 1998 to create the SabreSonic passenger solution, a customized version of Sabre's reservations system to Abacus subscribers in Asia.