Sabre Launches World's First Platform to Book High Definition Video Conference Rooms

SOUTHLAKE, Texas – July 23, 2012 – Sabre, a global technology leader serving travel agencies and corporations, today announced the launch of its award-winning, patent pending platform to shop and schedule high definition video conference meetings globally. Sabre Virtual Meetings, the world’s first global reservation system for video conferencing, eliminates the hassles of booking video conferences with an easy-to-use, cloud-based scheduling system for private and public rooms.

The Global Business Travel Association (GBTA) along with Fast Company recently named Sabre Virtual Meetings the winner of its Business Traveler Innovation Awards in the travel management category.

Sabre is launching its virtual meeting platform to corporations and travel agencies through GetThere and the Sabre Red Workspace, making it available to millions of business travelers and to more than 220,000 travel agents worldwide.

“Even though we’re seeing some recovery in business travel, cost-conscious corporations still want to use HD video conferencing to improve collaboration and increase ROI on travel and technology investments,” said Greg Webb, president, Sabre Travel Network. “One of the biggest challenges they face is the inability to search, book and connect video conferencing systems. Sabre Virtual Meetings solves for that and makes it easy to set up internal video conferencing meetings and connect private-to-public or public-to-public rooms.”

Sabre Virtual Meetings connects to multiple telecom and video conferencing providers to facilitate real-time shopping, live scheduling and confirmation simultaneously across multiple enterprises. The solution will also be readily available to other travel and third-party distribution channels including global distribution systems, travel management companies, online booking tools, and directly on the Internet.

Beginning in September, GetThere corporate customers can have access to Sabre Virtual Meetings directly from the GetThere homepage. For corporations who want to use high-definition visual communications, Sabre Virtual Meetings makes scheduling virtual meetings as convenient and easy as booking an airline reservation. Integration with a company’s travel policy helps employees make smart choices about when to travel for a meeting and when to use a virtual meeting. Sabre Virtual Meetings complements a company’s existing room scheduling applications and built in security features include viewership controls to determine who is able to shop and schedule meeting for both internal and external users.

For travel agencies, Sabre has developed a new Virtual Meetings Red App which will be available through its newly-launched Sabre Red App Centre. Using the Red App, agencies can easily integrate Sabre Virtual Meetings into the Red Workspace, expanding the travel-related services they can offer and helping customers take advantage of today’s advanced visual communication services.

As previously announced, Sabre partnered with Glowpoint to make their 45,000 privately owned rooms available through the Sabre Virtual Meetings system. Additionally, Sabre secured public room connections to Regus and similar providers so that Sabre Virtual Meetings customers may connect to private or public rooms for their video conferencing needs.  The combination of the Glowpoint privately owned rooms with the public room creates a dynamic marketplace for Sabre customers to shop, schedule and meet to make collaboration happen.

“Sabre’s scheduling platform will mean a step change for the video conferencing industry,” said Joseph Laezza, president and CEO for Glowpoint, a leading provider for global cloud-managed video services. “By incorporating video conferencing into the travel buying process and making it easy to schedule rooms, Sabre Virtual Meetings will significantly drive the video market forward.”

With Sabre Virtual Meetings, more employees will schedule and use corporate video conferencing systems which means corporations will improve the ROI of their technology investments and, through the reporting features, be able to monitor policy compliance, cost savings and room utilization.

Sabre Travel Network provides technology to the travel industry. It operates the world’s largest travel marketplace, connecting travel buyers and sellers through the Sabre global distribution system (GDS).  Its innovative technology connects 350,000 travel agents to more than 400 airlines, 100,000 hotels, 25 car rental brands, 50 rail providers, 14 cruise lines and other global travel suppliers. More than $100 billion of travel is purchased through this marketplace annually. 

Sabre Travel Network is part of Sabre Holdings, a global travel technology company serving the world’s largest industry- travel and tourism.  For more information please visit: www.sabretravelnetwork.com.

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Media Contact:
Heidi Castle
Sabre
Heidi.castle@sabre.com