New Sabre Functionality Enables Agents To Slice, Dice and Compare Ancillary and Total Fares

Beginning Sept. 17, Sabre Travel Network will enable travel agents to search for airfares plus selected ancillary services to compare the total cost of the trip.

Called Sabre Air Total Pricing, the new functionality will allow travel agencies worldwide to select specific airline ancillary services based on their customer’s preferences and frequent flyer status and provide a summary of ancillary service fees for their clients.

For example, a customer who wants to check two bags may have elite status on Carrier A, allowing free checking of two bags. She lacks elite status on Carrier B, which charges only for checking the second bag. The search results will display base fares for both carriers plus the second bag fee on Carrier B.

Other services that can be selected for a search include advance seat selection, lounge access, in-flight Internet access and meals. The search also will take into account negotiated fares and negotiated discounts or waivers of ancillary service fees. Air Total Pricing will slice and dice all these factors and will do the math for the agent and client.

Wanted: Workflow Efficiency

Chris Kroeger, senior vice president of marketing, said Sabre’s goal in introducing the new functionality is to bring efficiencies back to agents’ workflows. “The new ways of selling have created inefficiencies,” he said. With the unbundling of airfares, agents and their clients have lost the ability to gauge the true cost of a trip until after the trip is completed.

The issue has been particularly troubling for travel management companies and corporate travel departments. Not only do ancillary fees present budgeting problems, they have required the rewriting of travel policies to answer questions such as who is entitled to pay for a blanket on a flight and under what circumstances.

The trend has created a “complex environment” for both agents and clients, Kroeger said.

Kyle Moore

Kyle Moore, Sabre’s vice president of product marketing, said some of the ancillary fee data was taken from airlines’ test filings of their fares via ATPCO Optional Services. Although 26 airlines participated in the test, none has committed to using the OC Record system on an ongoing basis. ATPCO last year rolled out a very robust distribution system for ancillary services called OC Record.??

In response, Sabre took the bull by the horns and manually compiled a database of airlines’ ancillary fees in order to offer more complete information. It will monitor airline announcements for changes and additions to the fees. “It’s imperfect, but it’s a tremendous first step,” Moore said.

Booking of ancillary fees through GDSs will not be enabled until the Airline Reporting Corporation’s electronic miscellaneous document (EMD) goes live in the U.S. later this year, Moore added. ARC says it will be ready to process EMDs by the first week of November. The airlines participation in providing GDSs full information on ancillary products and fees, however, is an unknown.