Databanks at dawn: The curious case of STA Travel, Sabre and Amadeus

Travel technology beasts Sabre and Amadeus are at the centre of rather bizarre war of words – except one is gagged from saying anything.

Two weeks ago Amadeus issued a press release to say it had won a standard but nice piece of business within the STA Travel empire – grabbing the GDS elements of the agency’s offline retail presence in the UK.

The sense of excitement was obvious given that “STA Travel is one of the UK’s largest travel agents and was previously with Sabre”. Unfortunately, not all was as it appeared.

Almost immediately after issuing of the release – one site had predictably copied it almost word-for-word – PRs in London were pleading with journalists to remove the story from their sites, saying the deal was still being finalised and both parties were not yet ready to go public.

By default, the tale now becomes slightly more interesting.

Fast forward to yesterday and Sabre-STA Travel issue a joint press release extolling the virtues of their relationship, which includes retail connectivity. The mutual appreciation continues:

“Sabre has long supported STA’s retail businesses in the UK, US, Australasia and around Europe, and is STA’s sole GDS partner for its UK online business.”

When contacted, a Sabre official says the relationship is “very strong, very good, nothing changes”.

Surely Amadeus has something to say about this? Unfortunately it appears Amadeus is rather hoping it doesn’t have to say nothing at all – so doesn’t.

It turns out that the Amadeus story is completely true – but for reasons unknown it has decided not to bask in the glory of the win, despite STA now having a “multi-GDS” approach for retail.

Sabre and STA Travel’s release this week, according to some well placed figures close to the saga, is a standard PR exercise to smooth any ruffled feathers following STA’s decision to open up its retail branches to the Amadeus system.

In fact, Amadeus is apparently already handling tens of thousands of transactions for STA Travel in its retail branches.

Some may find it bizarre that such a issue has spiralled out of all proportions- but what it does show is that competition between the GDSs never wanes, which is actually good news for everyone.