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Travel Weekly reported today that Sabre is exploring possible collaboration with G2 SwitchWorks. This is based on a comment made by Sabre CEO Sam Gilliland in response to a question from a Sabre employee on December 12th. Texas Pacific Group one of the private equity companies that purchased Sabre also holds a 20% stake in G2 Switchworks. What does all […]

The announcement today that two private equity firms are buying out Sabre is part of a bigger trend. Over the last two years, investors have been putting billions of dollars in private equity firms. Recently private equity has bought out firms with such well known brands as Clear Channel, Readers Digest, Eddie Bauer, Burger King, Hertz, Domino’s Pizza and AMC […]

Today’s announcement by TRX on the acquisition of Hi-Mark marks a significant step in the area of corporate travel data management. Over the last 6-7 years Hi-Mark has successfully marketed their data management solution to many large corporate buyers. Despite this success, Hi-Mark’s position in the market is strongest with second tier TMCs and corporate buyers. By acquiring Hi-Mark, TRX […]

After years of speculation, today’s announcement of the merger between Travelport and Worldspan came as no great shock to anyone in the industry. The only surprising aspect of the deal is the lack of a competitive offer from Amadeus. As far as a fit, Amadeus and Worldspan would have been more complementary. Travelport has been suffering pre and post the […]

Amadeus introduced a new technology service this week called Meta Pricer. The service “allows airlines to optimise marketing and distribution reach by making cost-efficient use of travel search engines”. This is a clear effort to re-insert the GDS into the travel booking value chain in an era of increased fragmentation of content. There is no doubt that there is some […]

This week I met with Josh Steinitz, CEO of a new start-up called the Nile Project. The Nile Project uses personalization techniques enabling the consumer to create a more customized tour of a city. The consumer explicitly choosers an area of interest, then by using Ajax, the Nile project presents the consumer a limited number of preferences related to those […]