Travel tech giant, Sabre Corporation will cut as many as 800 jobs across 43 office locations, as it reorganizes during the COVID-19 pandemic. The company said it would undertake a strategic realignment of its airline and agency-focused businesses, with other measures to support the new organizational structure.
Sabre is mission-critical to the travel ecosystem
Sean Menke, Sabre chief executive, stated: “Today, we announced a critical step toward completing our transformation into a new Sabre. We began this transformational journey over two years ago with the unveiling of our SabreNext strategy and the creation of our Travel Solutions organization. Our leadership team has completed plans to strategically realign and fully combine Sabre’s airline and agency-focused businesses to provide a stronger, more seamless experience for our customers.”
Approximately 400 participants were also lost in previously announced voluntary severance and voluntary early retirement programs. “While we had to put certain initiatives and technology investments on hold in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, we remain steadfast in our commitment to helping our customers operate more efficiently, drive revenue and offer personalized travel experiences that benefit travelers, travel suppliers, and agencies. This pandemic has caused major shifts in the travel ecosystem resulting in the changing needs of our airline, hotel, and agency customers,” Menke continued.
Sabre will restore employee compensation
“We have taken this opportunity to accelerate the organizational changes we began in 2018 to address the changing travel landscape,” he added. For those that remain, Sabre will also restore employee compensation to 100% of base pay. Voluntary and involuntary pay reductions started in March and April across the world will also end. Rivals Amedeus and Travelport are aiming to raise fresh liquidity to overcome the downturn.
