Sabre (SABR) Bank of America Global Research C-Suite TMT Conference summary

Market environment and bookings trends

• Bookings growth was strong in early 2024, especially in the Americas, but Middle East conflict created a headwind, resulting in flat bookings overall as declines in EMEA and APAC offset gains elsewhere.

• Updated guidance for 2024 reflects low- to mid-single-digit bookings growth, with expectations for improvement in Q3 and Q4.

• Corporate and TMC volumes remain resilient, but fuel price impacts and consumer price elasticity introduce uncertainty for the rest of the year.

• Outperformance versus industry by 500-600 basis points in GDS bookings has buffered results.

AI and technology evolution in travel distribution

• Launched new partnerships with PayPal and Mindtrip, enabling conversational commerce and agentic API capabilities.

• Agentic platforms are expected to rapidly emerge as a new distribution channel, shifting some share from traditional OTAs and metasearch.

• Google’s evolving travel offerings may shift transaction locations but not necessarily the top of the funnel, impacting airline economics.

• OTAs and infrastructure/data players are positioned to be winners in the agentic AI landscape, while metasearch and supplier.com channels may lose share.

Corporate travel and TMCs

• AI is expected to drive productivity, margin expansion, and merchandising for TMCs, accelerating technology adoption and potential consolidation.

• TMCs are unlikely to disintermediate GDS providers due to complexity and shared economics, with agentic APIs supporting their evolution.