Star Alliance is making travel agents’ work lives a whole lot easier, with the introduction of automatic calculating on Round the World (RTW) and Circle Fares through Sabre.
Unveiled today, this means consultants will no longer have to manually calculate pricing.
How much time did Star Alliance just save you?
The service is available to agents connected to Sabre’s GDS on Star Alliance’s 14 RTW fares including three for travel in First Class, four for travel in Business Class and seven for travel in Economy Class.
In addition to the RTW fares, the Star Alliance network also offers the Circle Pacific Fare and five Regional Airpasses.
This is the latest initiative from the alliance group – whose members include Air China, Air New Zealand, Air Canada, Singapore Airlines, SWISS, Thai and United Airlines – to ease agents’ workloads.
VP Commercial and Business Development, said leveraging technology to simplify and accelerate what can be a complex process is a benefit to the industry.
“In this case, we now enable even more travel agents in even more markets to quickly and easily respond to customer wishes for round the world travel, which often involves highly individualised and complicated routings,” Horst Findeisen, Star Alliance VP Commercial and Business Development said.
Meanwhile, Senior Vice President EMEA added that the system is in response to demand from agents wanting a more automated process.
He also expects it will drive more bookings.
“We are proud to be the first GDS to introduce a new industry framework earlier in the year.”
Harald Eisenaecher, Sabre Senior Vice President EMEA
For RTW travel in Economy Class the applicable fare is determined through a combination of total number of stops and total mileage used.
The best price option allows customers to travel for a maximum of 26,000 miles and make anywhere between three and five stops.
The higher mileage levels in Economy Class – 29,000, 34,000 or 39,000 miles – allow a maximum of 15 stops.
For travel in First or Business Class passengers can always make up to 15 stops.
In Business Class the routing can cover 26,000, 29,000, 34,000 or 39,000 miles, while for First Class the lowest mileage level is 29,000.