Welcome to Travel Again Presents, the weekly travel roundup covering the headwinds and tailwinds impacting the business of travel. Please welcome our hosts, Mike McCormick and Ed Silver. Hello, Mike. Welcome to episode seven, season two. Cannot believe it. I know. It's hard to believe. It goes so fast. It does go fast. And... As you can imagine, we record a couple episodes a week these days. And so, Mike, I'm going to bust right into it today. Does that sound good? Sounds great. Let's do it. All right, Mike, this is election week here in the U.S.
What the Election Means for Travel
And article number one is Trump. Wins the election in both electoral count and they're still working on the popular count. But it does seem like he will win that as well. Mike, let's talk about what does this mean for travel in general and any other thoughts you have about this fairly historic win? Well, Look, travel is bipartisan. It drives every other industry. But as we go through this process now, the election is wrapping up and vote counts and everything are being finalized and certified. But the realities are then the next step is leadership, agendas, priorities are all being reset and determined.
A lot of that work does get done or in kind of preparation for what will happen after the election. To get a head start on it. But the realities are this is the time when a lot of that now is really in, you know, full force behind the scenes, right? As they get ready for the transition and leadership coming in January. So, you know, look, we've got years of experience of working on the Hill and working on issues. And like I said, travel is bipartisan. We always say, you know, travel in so many ways for our industry is, you know, apple pie and motherhood when you're in talking to congressional leaders and uh to the white house etc and to the and certainly to you know the the d.o.t and to all involved everybody appreciates and understands I think largely the impact that travel has the importance of it both in terms of jobs and the economy etc and all the stats have been are well known however there are always mostly unintended kind of ways or consequences to actions, bills, proposed rules that get put out there that do have an impact on our industry and potentially a really damaging one at times.
And what's amazing to me, but also understandable, look, our elected officials are dealing and all of the staff here working on this stuff in Washington, they're working on a whole range of issues, as we know. And they have to try to be, as much as they can, to some degree, experts in all of them, right? Because they're working on healthcare and foreign policy issues and et cetera, et cetera. So sometimes... Things happen, bills get proposed, initiatives, you know, put out that can have a positive effect on travel or a negative one and on tourism, etc.
And so what we're always trying to be mindful of and try to educate, you know, are those, you know, congressional leaders, etc. About the policies that are being created, the impact that they're having. And, you know, at times when there is a damaging, you know, kind of unintended consequence to something, we're sounding the alarms and saying, hey, wait, you got to stop and take a look at what really is happening here. So Mike, one issue or bill we were tracking prior to the election was how the Credit Card Competition Act, otherwise known as the Durbin-Marshall bill, could impact travel and credit card points.
The Credit Card Fee Bill and Your Points
Does this election, now that it's just about over, have an impact on that one way or another? Well, yes. So the bill, which we're really starting to get word out and educate everyone on, is one that the intention is to basically find a way to, well, the stated objective is to lower the interchange fee, or basically the fees that businesses pay for the credit card transactions, offering alternative ways that those companies can process their transactions and not go through the you know, all the traditional Visa MasterCard channels that they use today.
But they have an opportunity to have an alternative and or keep those intent in it with an objective of trying to lower those fees. The problem with that is, is that twofold. One is those fees haven't gone up in ten years. So first off, it's not an immediate problem that needs to get solved. But the travel impact is huge and negative. It is one where basically what would happen is you take a revenue stream that was used to fund the points and all the benefits that consumers get back for spending when they're spending on cards and then used to go travel and to go and drives tourism.
I mean, all the local economies, any local economy that has a tourism impact, when those points go away, if they go away, would have the downstream negative impact would be tremendous. And what we're trying to get the word out is that, A, one, you're trying to solve a problem that's not a problem. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. That's problem number one. But problem number two is the devastating impact you would have here is just, you're talking billions and billions and billions of dollars. For every ten percent reduction in in the revenue stream that's coming through you're talking about over four billion dollar impact on local economies just here in the us so it's one of those where again if the intention was hey we're trying to do something to you know with the intention of making it better for businesses The realities are it isn't.
And then the handful of businesses you're going to help, meaning like the Walmarts and the Targets and the Home Depots, et cetera, that will see possibly a reduction in the fees they're charged to process their credit card transactions. Everyone else loses. Small business loses. Consumers lose. Tourism industry gets hammered. I mean, it's just one of those. The tradeoffs aren't there. I mean, it's not worth it. But now that we're in kind of a lame duck session and a new regime coming in, should we still be worried about it, Mike? Well, yeah, that's the other thing is that the way it works is that even bills are proposed and get sponsored to go through on their merits.
But if they don't have support, congressmen will try to attach it to something else that's being pushed through that might be part of a – maybe it's a budget resolution or it's another bill that has bipartisan support and will get pushed through. Even during this interim time that can happen? Oh, it can happen during the lame duck session. In fact, what they call it when you're in this period between leadership transition. It actually could happen – as much or more often than even during during like a an active Congress congressional session next year, because at that point that'll get filtered back into the bigger priorities.
Right. And more of the approach that gets taken, it's kind of back to normal. This is one of those times where things can get pushed through. And the fact is that we need to be vigilant now just as much now as we do in January or in June of next year, right? It's like just because everybody's breathing kind of a sigh of relief because they're not getting texts to donate to their campaign every ten seconds, right? It doesn't mean that the business stops and the business in Washington certainly doesn't. Yeah.
All right. Any other thoughts on travel's impact due to this election at this stage? Well, no, I mean, I think it's a wait and see. I think we'll do more work, certainly, on evaluating, analyzing. But I think we have to wait and see what the priorities truly are when they come January and February. And again, then we'll do the analytics to really try to understand any and all impact, positively or negatively, to travel and try to make sure our voice is heard as an industry. Okay, we will keep our eyes on it.
Okay, Mike, we will be right back with our guest. Mike, thanks to our sponsor, Safe Travel Rx, an app that takes the worry off your itinerary, providing travel peace of mind with emergency response components, travel security, and risk management, especially for those traveling internationally. It includes twenty-four seven global concierge assistance. Landed in the hospital in China? Forgot your prescription while it's stolen? Safe Travel Rx is your prescription for better, safer travel. Download it today to discover the power of Safe Travel Rx and reach out to them if you have interest in offering this tool to your travelers to provide them with the duty of care you are required to provide.
Kurt Ekert, Sabre
Safe Travel Rx, your prescription for better travel. All right, Mike, on to our guest today. I am super excited to see this gentleman back in our presence. Today we will have Kurt Eckert, president and CEO of Sabre on the show. Kurt was appointed CEO in April of twenty twenty three. He joined Sabre as president in January of twenty two. Bringing twenty five years of global operating leadership and governance experience in technology, travel and tourism, and a track record of growth and turnaround performance. Before joining Sabre, Kurt spent five years as president and CEO of CWT, where he engineered a digital transformation while delivering significant growth, highlighted by seven billion in new business wins.
Kurt holds a BS from the Wharton School at the University of Penn, an MBA from the University of South Carolina, and saw active duty as a US Army officer. Kurt, Mike and I worked together during our years at Senate. He is a pleasure to have on the show. Please welcome to the stage, Kurt Eckert. Hello, Kurt. Great to see you. And I recall knowing you when you were both very much younger men. You look about the same. I think you look great, Kurt. You have an age one day. I don't know what's happened, but time goes by, and that's a good thing.
It is good to see you, sir. Well, before we get started, I wore my Eagles jersey today on purpose because, of course, we have the big Eagles-Dallas game on Sunday, and you're Sabres headquartered in Dallas, of course. But I don't think you're a Cowboys fan. Well, Mike, I grew up in New York and Philadelphia. Yeah. So I'm a giant New York Yankees fan. I'm mourning the loss that the Yankees had against the Dodgers. And I moved to Pennsylvania when I was seven years old, in nineteen seventy eight, and was a little bit upset about moving to Pennsylvania.
So as a rejection of all things Pennsylvania, I became a massive Dallas Cowboys fan as a young child. That is a betrayal. Clark made the catch and they lost to the San Francisco forty-niners. So unfortunately, and I will be at the game this Sunday, My Cowboys are not having a stellar season. No. Disarray. They're in disarray, man. It's pretty ugly. Yeah. It doesn't matter where we live, Kurt. My kids are required to root for the Eagles or they sleep in the woods, and they know that. Yeah, Philadelphia fans are known as being the harshest, most challenging fans in the world.
We're loyal we're just loyal we're proud we're proud and loyal and I don't know well we'll see hey look I mean uh washington the commanders are coming out of nowhere so they're giving us you know all run for the they're the surprise certainly of uh of our division but yeah yeah yeah we'll see but anyway so well I wore it for you I appreciate it. Thank you. I would have paid. See, I would have with all the New York, New Jersey in all these years, I would have paid you more as a Giants fan.
Yeah. My dad was, I rebelled. Yeah. Well, that's certainly rebellion. Well, again, thanks for coming on. Just before we get into the issues, I mean, I guess a little bit of like, look, you know, we've known you for a long time and you've had, you know, senior leadership roles at an airline back in Continental days, TMC, you know, well, we knew each other, you know, worked together at Ascendant with Travelport, then on to CWT and now Sabre. What drew you to the role? Why did you take it? What appealed about jumping into Sabre a couple of years ago?
From Orbitz and GTA to Sabre
Yeah. So first of all, in my experience, I was an executive at Orbitz, was the CEO of GTA, which was the biggest hotel wholesaler. Suffice to say, that means I'm just getting older than I was. And it's interesting. I had known Sabre for so many years, mainly as a competitor. More recently as a customer. And in all my years in the industry, I saw Sabre as having a very compelling market position, being quite commercially astute. But as I looked at Sabre, and this was back in basically the second half of two thousand twenty one, what I saw is a company that I didn't believe was innovating at the pace perhaps that they used to.
And I thought there was a real opportunity with how dynamic and changing the marketplace is to really try to do something unique and impactful here. And so I was attracted to the opportunity to drive what I saw as a transformation turnaround opportunity at Sabre. I had thought I was retired after my last role, but it was during COVID. My kids were out at school. And so I saw this as just a unique one-time opportunity challenge and really happy that I decided to say yes to this. Well, you're right. I mean, the legacy of Sabre was one where it was, you know, it was always the thought of as, you know, the kind of the bellwether for certainly for any agency doing corporate travel.
To your point about the innovative part, either by acquisition, but also just in terms of being a workhorse, you know, for the whole industry. I mean, Sabre was, you know, really, it was at that time in a real leadership position, you know, back in the day. I mean, I, you know, And, you know, to your point of, you know, with that changing that not innovating at the same pace, you know, losing ground and, you know, different changing marketplace. But then to your point, and that's what we'll get into a little bit.
The changes that we're in the midst of right now, really opportunity is there to reset the table. And so, you know, let's start with airline pricing, with NDC, with everything there. Like, what's the current status with Sabre? You've got, you know, you've got a few outliers like Turkish Frontier saying, you know, no, you know, and doing the... And at times from the outside looking in, it's like, is that more about negotiating or is that really about a position they're taking where they're trying to basically do direct only in their business?
Rebuilding the GDS as a Platform
But, you know, how do you where do you see Sabre in this whole environment right now? Give us the update on all that. Yes, we should think about pricing and distribution. Certainly what's happening with B to B or intermediary airline distribution is airlines want to market and retail in the intermediary channel as dynamically as they've learned how to do in the BTC channel. And to me, that's fundamentally what NDC or continuous pricing are really all about. And so let me start with what Sabre's doing from an airline-facing perspective. If you think about the Sabre of old, which was the GDS, the global distribution system, it was the world of, at a fact, fair filing, very efficient, super transaction capabilities.
But didn't necessarily support what the airlines are trying to do as well as they want to do it. So we're doing a couple of things that are quite dramatic. Number one is we're building a multisource air content platform that enables us to consume content, whether it's Edifact, NDC or the traditional low cost carrier long tail content that was never in the GDS, perhaps maybe was a travel fusion for an agency. We're able to dynamically consume any of that content wherever it's exposed. It feeds through the same pricing algorithms, the same caching solutions.
And then there are dramatic improvements in what we've done from a workflow integration and automation standpoint for the agency. So for the airline, however you want to expose your content through a legacy API, through a new API, and whether you're a traditional distributor or not, we're able to consume that content. And what we bring are, I think, probably the highest conversion channel of any channel available to airlines in the world. Number two is we bring premium eyeballs. So when you look at the average fare or the average yield to an airline of distributing through us, it's greater through the GDSs than it is through any other channel.
And because we have a very strong TMC corporate footprint, we actually provide a premium even to our two largest GDS competitors. So basically it's a very efficient vehicle, qualified eyeballs and high yield. And we do that for a cost of sale that typically is one to two percent of the price that the airline is charging. By most accounts, that's a very efficient form of distribution. And so we're working very hard to make sure that the way airlines want to merchandise and retail and do that more dynamically, we believe will be the best vehicle for them over time.
From an agency or buyer perspective, whether this is a corporation, TMC, OTA, and they think about this, The same reason that people shop at Amazon or that financial analysts use a Bloomberg and don't try to access that data all by themselves is they want efficient access to choice, transparency, and basically a plethora of content. So what we do for them is we bring that to them with transparency, with choice, and we integrate it in a manner, in a way that works in their environment to drive efficiency. I can remember, for example, when I was at CWT and we looked at a booking that was done outside of the GDS for example, in travel fusion or mediums like that, on average, in terms of the difference in the revenue model, and then two, loss in productivity, it costs substantially more or substantially dilutive to do an air transaction outside of the GDS.
That would apply for a Direct Connect, that would apply to using a third party plugin. And think about it this way, if you were, again, if you're in finance and using a Bloomberg and a piece of data exits Bloomberg, you can still go get that data from the marketplace. But it's going to be less efficient for you than having it at your fingertips in that display. We're no different. And the bad analogy I'll use, and I'll say it's bad because I developed it, is if you went back to two thousand five and you were in the position of being a cable television company and you were in the catbird seat and you foresaw the coming of streaming.
And what you did is you said, we're going to basically consolidate cable media content, new media content, whether it's on demand or live, we're going to have different commercial models. We'll normalize that. And then we'll present that in your traditional interfaces, the television or through any medium that you want. I think right now you'd have basically a platform that where the consumer experience would be superior to what any of us can get in the marketplace, because that does not exist. And from a media standpoint, you'd have a very efficient, easy way to distribute your content, as opposed to all these streaming services and cable, which are very fragmented today, consulting user experience.
I think done properly, we have the opportunity to redefine this where the GDS is a very important component of the platform that we provide, but it's just that it's a component. So I think that when people talk about the GDS and they say that is synonymous with that effect, I think that's a misnomer that now a component of a much larger set of capabilities that we offer. So you do hear noise in the marketplace about various content. I think over time that we are literally the best intermediary platform with the greatest value available to any airline in the world.
Well, and I'll, you know, in support of that, some of that, I mean, look, you know, it's always been, you know, just in whatever form, the GDS always has been capturing the long tail of all of these suppliers, all the, you know, airlines, hotels, carbon companies, like, you know, again, backed in one place. I think it's a really interesting analogy because, you know, I look at what's happened now in to your point about media where you have all these separate streaming services, you may or may not still be, you know, plugging into your, you know, your local cable offering.
Anyway, you've got, you're paying all these different fees. You know, there's businesses that have cropped up that are just solely about doing an analysis to show you why you're losing money because you're paying all these different fees. I mean, it's become ridiculous that that's where we are right now. And there's a reckoning coming, and you can see it almost coming full circle. And for those of us who have been around in the travel industry, we've also seen that kind of full circle around the GDS and the role of the intermediary that, again, back to your point of it it it's about I yes I can go consume and find all that content other places or well not all of it but a good eighty percent of it but but I can't but but with what lack of efficiency there what cost the time the the you know again you're it's just it's not it's not efficient to do that it's not even like possible to do it but put efficiency aside for a second kurt maybe even using your analogy The user experience that you get through some of the streaming services is way beyond what a traditional medium could provide.
Whether NDC Delivers Personalisation
So applying that to your business model, do you think that the true kind of end goal of NDC around personalization, dynamic offers, bundles with ancillaries, and a fantastic user experience that matches or is better than a direct.com can provide. Will folks be able to consume that from a Sabre and provide that experience? Yeah, so in the intermediary channel, which is what we're talking about here, Ed, it's a great question. Our focus through the multi-source content platform And NDC is a big part of that. The use of AI driven algorithms, et cetera, lots of automation is that think about how dynamic the airline is in their B to C channel where they have full control of the experience with the end user.
We will be able to replicate that for the airline in terms of the way they distribute retail merchandise. And from an end user standpoint, it's going to look and feel much like an e-commerce experience. But remember that, whether that's expressed through an API and it's the OTAs and traveler, or maybe it's a travel counselor for a TMC, there's a tremendous amount of business logic that we have to put there in terms of preferencing, workflow integration, the way we understand the profile of the traveler, et cetera. So there's a lot of utilities that the travel agent or the buyer provides to the consumer.
And that adds a layer and a different experience than what the airline direct offers. And there's a reason that I would say people choose to shop at Amazon for Nike or that Nike's distributes to Amazon. It's because they have a lot of eyeballs that that's where people choose to buy their shoes. They are Zappos, for example. And for those travelers, Nike says, I want exposure to those eyeballs. We offer, I think, the same utility in the intermediary channel. But yeah, I can tell you we're already largely there in terms of with NDC or with modern API distribution.
We consume that. We on redistribute it. Now, the difference is if you're a consumer and you want choice and transparency, you may not want to shop at airline.com. You may want to shop a more robust set of airline content. And we're able to do that and make sure that it's very relevant for your search result. So I actually think that we are literally the best intermediary platform that's out there. Okay. And on that, I had to bring it up because I love the phrase you coined, rate vomit. When you're talking about hotel rates on any given night, you usually describe like, six hundred plus hotel rate codes at any night for a property.
That's the part I get excited about when I think about what AI can do and the business logic you're talking about. Then you have these way too many choices. And for the consumer, and even for the agent serving the consumer, the ability to have that logic actually be distill it down just to, let's say a range of choices that are actually usable and appropriate and, you know, meet the needs of the buyer, you know, the, the, the customer, the traveler and the seller, you know, we're not there yet, but we're getting there.
Fixing Hotel Content and Rate Vomit
I mean, to your point, right. I think we're. We come at the hotel side. I didn't coin rate vomit, by the way, I've heard that before, but I think the challenge, if you're the consumer or the end user is because of the fragmentation of hotel distribution and it can be confusing trying to beat the travel agent or find the best spot rate in the market. So we come at this sort of two ways. One is with our hospitality solutions business, which is where we provide IT to hoteliers. And then two is in our distribution business where we're basically providing the connectivity bridge between sellers and buyers.
And so let me speak about that in two components. Number one is on the IT front. What we're up to, we have the leading CRS platform in the marketplace. We have an emerging PMS platform. And as we've talked about, we have a set of technologies we call Retail Studio. What Retail Studio does is enable the hotelier at a property level to sell any attribute or any of its wares within its four walls. And then anything else that it wants, it can sell its restaurant, it can sell sightseeing next door. It allows them to do that with unlimited SKUs through literally any channel.
And there's a messaging service, for example, that would say, oh, Mike wants a bottle of champagne. How do we fulfill that and get it to Mike's room? And so we provide that holistic solution. And the idea is as literally, if you're running a hotel and you're looking at Revpar, which is becoming more and more challenged as development slows down and the pricing environment may not be as robust as it's been for the last couple of years, is hotels need to grow their same store sales. So what we think we're going to offer them is a retail-like experience that they can bring to the consumer.
And so we're doing really powerful stuff on the hotel side of this. But then when you think about it downstream from a buyer perspective, trying to understand the spot rates, whether you have a retail rate, a corporate negotiated rate, maybe your rates in Expedia or booking, you may have proprietary content, stuff through hotel beds. And the terms around those rates may be very different. What we've done there, and we have a really strong leader named Chin Mai who's leading this for us, is we have built a platform not dissimilar to what we've done with AIR, which integrates all these disparate sources of content and think about content as rates, availability, and then all of the media around that.
We have an engine then that when you shop normalizes that. So we provide a very relevant search response and we can show you the Hotel McCormick, a four star property. We can show you the like for like silver property across the street that's very similar. And then within the McCormick property, we can basically break out and say, here's the six different types of rate code you're at and you can drill down on those. So the idea is you're able to understand the spot pricing that's in the market. And basically take advantage of that and so you know it's a challenge for the I think for hotels because you have there's certain things that are done at the crs or the chain level sometimes there are different pricing decisions made or distribution decisions made at the property level and but as the end user you're trying to get through all of that challenge and so I think that we have good solutions both on the distribution and on the it front but I think you're going to see hotels become Even better at this as they go forward, you're seeing basically a lot of traction happening with hotel tech, where hotels are basically beginning to adopt enterprise software solutions that enable them to become great at what they do, which is running their operation, being great at marketing, but not trying to perhaps to build their own technology if they don't have to.
Right. And so with everything coming with, you know, certainly, you know, as we start bringing kind of a AI agent to the, to the picture, right. And like putting that overlay on top of everything, I know, you know, you announced about Saber Mosaic and the work you're doing there, but, you know, that's the part to me, it starts, you know, it gets exciting about accelerating some of these capabilities because again, now you're putting, you know, a front end on it that, you know could and actually could ultimately be somewhat really disruptive to the existing kind of distribution environment we're in you know some thoughts about all that first maybe a little bit two parts one talk a little bit about mosaic and what you're doing there but also you know longer term outlook for the agency community what in your mind what does it look like you know and uh you know we've always been talking about the the demise of the agent and the gds and but you know that We're still all here.
AI, and Why Scale Decides It
So let me step back. I can talk AI first, then I'll get into Sabre Mosaic. So we've been at work long before I arrived at Sabre with leveraging large language models, and I'll call it traditional AI. And that's embedded, for example, in our pricing revenue management solutions pretty well. I think we're on the cutting edge of that. Over the past year or so, we've made extensive use leveraging generative AI and we have a deep partnership with Google and therefore Google's Gemini platform is sort of our primary vehicle for that. When you think about the applications for our business or a travel agent, I would think about a few.
The obvious ones are the productivity of your customer service engagement. For example, there's a lot that maybe is manual today where AI can take the place of either the person or the automation you have and do a better job and upgrade the user experience. With developer productivity, Basically, Gemini can write code and you could put your engineers in a position of being more quality checkers where they're adding value, but some of the lower level tasks perhaps are performed by AI. That has the opportunity to drive significantly increased development throughput versus what we've known traditionally.
And I think the thing that's going to change fundamentally is the consumer experience, whether this is corporate or in leisure. The way you research, shop for and engage when you're buying or consuming travel, I think that's fundamentally going to change. And now the fulfillment part will always be a challenge. And I can't necessarily get around that. But the shopping experience, which is what's out there available, how do I present that to you in a compelling, relevant fashion? And how do you know how do you then consume that? I think for everybody that's out there, they're going to have to become very good, whether you're an OTA, whether you're a TMC, you're going to have to become a modern e-commerce retailer.
And AI is the tip of the spear there. And so what's the future for the agent community? Look, there are a number of agents. There's OTAs. There's TMCs. There are these large leisure players who have captive corporate card audiences. You have a lot of different boutique type of enterprises focused on cruise or other things. So there's a very big thriving travel agent community. But I think as you look at what's happened with OTAs, I think that's a good proxy for what's going to happen across the rest of the travel agent ecosystem in all channels.
And that is scale is going to matter. And scale matters for a couple of reasons. Number one is the ability to continuously test in your environment and then implement new solutions. The larger you are, the more flexibility you have to do this. Number two is in a world of content fragmentation, Scale matters in terms of the ability to drive relevance to suppliers. And that's going to matter more and more going forward. And last and most important, if you're running a travel agent, you are in a technology arms race today, whether you realize it or not.
And the larger you are as you invest capital in, whether it's AI or different type of solutions that matter to the customer or matter in terms of your ability to monetize the eyeballs that you serve, If you have scale, you can amortize those investments over a wide swath of transactions. If you're smaller, it's much harder to make those investments at scale. And so I think whether it's through consolidation or organic growth, you're going to see folks, the larger folks be able to innovate at a faster pace perhaps than folks who are subscale.
And so an AI is going to really change the game where the pace at which you can accelerate from the field will be very different than what it was historically. So switching gears to Sabre Mosaic, well before I arrived at Sabre, we were underway with the development of a new platform, which is offer and order, effectively a new platform that will over time replace the PSS of old for airlines. And so Sabre Mosaic is now in market. I think we have more products in production as part of Sabre Mosaic than any other offer and order platform that's been introduced to market.
Sabre Mosaic's First Customers
We've won our first couple of, lead customers in Virgin Australia and Riyadh. We're in a lot of other conversations, but this is a really cool platform. So first of all, it's fully cloud native. It is fully modular and open. It is PSS agnostic, meaning it can sit on top of Sabre Sonic, Altea, any proprietary system. It can be bought in components or in overall. And Google's Gemini AI is embedded and we're continuously upgrading with that. So this is going to enable airlines to dramatically improve, to your question earlier, their ability to behave as efficient e-commerce retailers.
And so the offer side of this, I think, is going to get traction very, very quickly. The order side, which is effectively a fundamental replacement of the PSS, for a network carrier that may have hundreds of applications or systems hanging off of the PSS, that's a multi-year major transformation effort. And so I think that Whereas IATA has said that's going to happen by twenty thirty en masse for the industry. I think the timeline for order is going to be a longer horizon than that. But I think, you know, in the course of fifteen years, that is certainly going to happen because it's just the technology is so much better and more nimble than what sits there today.
Well, and in all that, I mean, that's certainly one of the, you know, kind of, I guess, analysis. We were looking at the marketplace and saying, to your point about scale and investment, I mean, this is a big money game to do this, right? To make those kinds of investments, to bring the technology forward. You know, it's not – it feels like the industry is kind of – kind of evolved two ways meaning you're going to have large players and then you're going to have you know smaller boutique players they're going to be aligned they're going to be serving you know collecting you know aggregating demand at a smaller boutique level the middle is going to be tough because if you're you know too big to be small too small to be big kind of thing because just the investment that's going to be required to keep going but back to the point of then the reliance back on companies like yours to, to do that and then provide those companies.
You can't do it on your own. So you're going to need to license and, and you know, leverage off of capabilities you're building. And the way I, just to show how sexy I can be at fifty three years old, the way I talk about the business is that Sabre is the technology plumbing of the travel industry. And I don't know about you, but Most people, being a plumber may not be what everybody wants to do as they think about themselves as technology companies. We think we can do it for our customer base, whether it's suppliers or whether it's buyers, and bring a great solution to them at very efficient economics.
And over time, as we innovate, we think the value we provide will be greater and greater. Of course, look, customers have choice. The market will discipline those who don't innovate at pace. Our focus is innovating and delivering on our commitments. Hey, good plumbers make good money too, man. Nothing wrong with that. Yep. Yep. Well, um, Last earnings call, you called Sabre a very different company today. We've talked a lot about all that here, but if you distill it down, what does that mean to you? And again, where do you see Sabre long term as this all evolves?
Yeah. So first of all, our ethos and our purpose is to be customer obsessed. As a pure B to B play, We are only as good as the value that we bring to and through our customer base. We've driven a culture here of empowerment, innovation, and performance. As you look at the executive leadership table of Sabre, there's not a single person at my table that was there at the start of COVID. So culturally and in terms of the leadership ranks, it's a very different place than it was historically. And then strategically, we lean into three key areas.
Number one is modernization of our technology. We're now at in the cloud from a compute perspective. We're building things that are modular and open. We're leveraging AI. We are highly resilient, highly stable. We've got great security protocols. And so we're really moving in the direction of being a leading enterprise software company. Sabre was one of the first SaaS companies ever created in the world. And I think in some ways we're returning to those roots. Number two is as we think about our IT businesses, which is Air IT and then Hospitality Solutions, It's leveraging our PSS and CRSs and then really modernizing the retail experience.
And so we're doing that in hospitality through the retail studio suite of products and then in airline IT through Sabre Mosaic. So it's taking our customers in the marketplace on a journey to accomplish what they want. And then the last is distribution, which is the largest piece of our business is, you know, this is not your grandmother's GDS anymore. We're building an open market. With a multi-source air platform, with best in class hotel distribution and media capabilities, with modern digital payments capabilities through our Confirma virtual payments asset. And we're aggressively going after the share in the marketplace.
And so I think we're just, we're playing offense and we realized that for us to succeed, this is all about innovation and being a proper tech and software company. But we're doing things just at a very different pace. We're winning in the marketplace. As I compare the customer relationships we have today to when I joined the company, they're really on the upswing and we're in a much healthier place than we were historically. And that gets down to one, valuing the customers properly and more importantly, delivering on what we say we're going to do and innovating so that they know that we're the platform that they want to be on long term.
For me, I do this by choice. I'm very fortunate. And it's about working with people I deeply trust and respect and I can tell you we're loaded with a cadre of people like that. That's great. Yeah. And to your point of, you know, you're, you're still, you're very much, you know, as we are in the travel industry, it's still, it's a community, right. And you have to be able to bring, you know, in a B to B business like this, you got to bring everybody along for the ride, right. It's not even, even if you make those advancements, even if you, you know, with the things you're doing, Culturally, the way you communicate, work with your customers, that's old school stuff that never tires, man.
It's still what matters the most. We've got to earn the trust of our customers every single day and never take that for granted. Yep. So wrap up question. This is for season two is what's your guilty pleasure when you're on the road? Well, first of all, let me say that for those of you listening, business travel is not always glamorous. Really? No, for example, I'll be in our Poland office next week and then I'll be at Confirma in Manchester, England. So I'll take a red eye. I'll be sleep deprived. I'm excited to see all of my colleagues around the world.
But so one of the things that I really value is making sure that I eat relatively well, try to get some workouts in. But I'd say my guilty pleasures are the limited times and space I have to go on long walks, especially in cool cities I get to go to. And then number two is once or twice a year, my really guilty pleasure is I'll get a massage if it's a nice hotel with a cool spa. And I do feel guilty when I get that done. True, true guilty pleasure. That's good.
Well, Kurt, again, thanks for joining us today. A lot of terrific insight. Great to hear the progress you're making, you know, making with Sabre. And, you know, we say it whenever, as we talk to leaders around the industry, our industry is terrific industry, but also always needs, you know, terrific leaders to have, you know, to take the message out there and to represent our industry well. And you're certainly one of them. So thanks for joining us today. Guys, thank you so much and congrats on the podcast and everything you're doing.
Thank you to Kurt Eckert, president and CEO of Sabre. Kurt, great to see you. Thanks. All right, Mike, we'll be right back with headwinds and tailwinds. Yeah, so as always, we'd like to take a few minutes and talk about Travel Again Advisory and our advisory practice. Travel Again Advisory brings clarity to complex issues, infuses creativity into solutions, and elevates your company to a whole new level of competitiveness in today's dynamic travel world. Our practice focuses on two key areas, improving results and maximizing shareholder value. We work with a number of companies around the space and have a long list of terrific relationships that we've worked on, both in terms of helping companies with transactions, with their business plans, their long-term strategies, their go-to-market plan.
Any place where you need help, you've got, let's say, an underperforming asset or an underperforming part of your business, we're happy to help and come in. And really make a difference in making that a better part of your offering. But all in all, it doesn't matter whether you're early stage or an established company in the space. If you need help, give us a call, and we certainly can bring our experience to you. All right. Thanks for that, Mike. And now we will wrap with headwinds and tailwinds, where we identify what we think is adding value to travel or taking it away.
Headwinds and Tailwinds
Mike, you're up first with headwinds. Well, the headwind is actually an interesting one. It's about the UK regulators in their preliminary findings were saying that the, you know, the AMEX-GBT-CWT deal would lessen competition. And I always get frustrated by some of these uh this analysis like that I think it is a real headwind um we just had the whole conversation about how the marketplace is changing and how much that you know scale does matter but not from a sense of controlling the market or creating a decreasing competition this is about just normal like consolidation that where you've got two companies coming together, adding some additional volume that actually, you know, would, would help spur more investment back into the very things we were just talking about in this podcast.
I think I get frustrated because I think those, those, those evaluations are done almost on a very old set of criteria. They're not looking at where the marketplace is and where it's going so much is kind of using, I think, at times, a kind of a dated approach to looking at what the marketplace is. We've seen it time and time again, where the regulators have kind of gotten involved and said there's an issue. And then it's one of those where you look back and you go, What were they doing? I mean, it's so irrelevant to the marketplace.
And so again, I hope this is something that is just one of those things you have to do to get through a process, not one where something will get held up because I don't see from an outside looking... I don't see this at all to be that kind of issue. And if they have to make some accommodations for whatever reason, they're concerned about consolidation of customers in a certain segment, I guess. But the realities are that, look, this is normal. You know, part of a process in our business, the business, uh, travel agency business is still highly fragmented.
You don't have any one dominant player or players. Um, so I, I just don't get it. And I hope this is just a little, you know, speed bump, not a real, uh, real headwind. Thanks for that, Mike. For my tailwind, Mike, I picked up on a couple of articles. One was Expedia extends its loyalty program to Microsoft Bing travel users. This also matches an article we covered on our last episode around MGM and Marriott loyalty points, and of course, ties to our focus on loyalty points and those being in danger.
But what I like about this is, flexibility and control of the points you earn and being able to use them in new and unique ways. I think Expedia extending its loyalty program to Bing users, that's really interesting. If you are starting to build up Expedia loyalty points, we noted in another episode that Expedia had rolled out loyalty points across all of its different platforms and brands. And so I like to see this in terms of, I think it's good news when you can use your loyalty points wherever you're earning them in unique ways and so you know kudos to them for trying something unique there and we'll keep looking out for unique ways in which loyalty points can be uh earned and burned which is great yeah and it keeps the tourism engine going man this is all part of it you know and then the again the positive impacts downstream when the tours tourism engine is flowing and grow and go in churning along you know points being a big you know fuel in the tank right big driver it's a big driver and it's great.
And those, you know, again, anytime companies can make their, you know, those, like you said, those points more accessible, more usable, more transferable, et cetera, that's all good and good for the consumer. And that's where the focus should be. All right, Mike, thanks for that. And that is our show today. Thanks again to our sponsor, Safe Travel Rx, and we will see you back again here next week. Have a great night, Mike. See you, Ed.
