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| President, Sabre West Africa, Gabriel Olowo, said the importance of GDS among other innovations in global aviation cannot be over-emphasized, but Nigeria has really not come onboard despite huge potentials in the travelling population. |
Sabre targets 30% market share in Nigeria
Low uptake of emerging technology in the air travel sector has been
blamed for poor visibility and stuttering growth of local airlines in
the country.The Guardian learnt that local airlines, unlike their
foreign counterparts, are either unreceptive or unwilling to pay for
technology like Global Distribution System (GDS) that is the in-thing in
air travel business globally.
GDS is a network operated by a company that enables automated
transactions between travel service providers (mainly airlines, hotels
and car rental companies) and travel agencies. This enables a travel
agent with a connection to a single GDS to choose and book various
flights, hotels, activities and associated services on all the vendors
operating in the same route who are part of that GDS network.
President, Sabre West Africa, Gabriel Olowo, said the importance of
GDS among other innovations in global aviation cannot be
over-emphasized, but Nigeria has really not come onboard despite huge
potentials in the travelling population.
Olowo, at the 10th year anniversary of Sabre West Africa, recently in
Lagos, said the industry has realized the importance of technology, “but
our local operators can’t buy it or pay for it.”
According to him, “Some of them that bought it couldn’t pay. But all
the international airlines are there; talk of the Emirates, Qatar,
British Airways, and United and so on, because Global Distribution
technology is about taking your products beyond your sovereign area.
“For instance, who knows www.arikair.com in Australia? It is only in
Nigeria that you known www.arikair.com, www.medview.com. Even in
Nigeria, some people don’t know, talk-less of a place like Australia.
So, how do you sell an Arik or Aero Contractor flight ticket, if you are
not in GDS?”
Global Distribution S ystem enables real-time link to the vendor’s
database. For example, when a travel agency requests a reservation on
the service of a particular airline company, the GDS system routes the
request to the appropriate airline’s computer reservations system.
Olowo added that Sabre West Africa, in the last 10 years had been
promoting aviation technology in Nigeria and offering travel solutions
amidst the challenges of doing business in Africa.
He recalled that Sabre UK was quite reluctant to have a partner in
Nigeria, when it was approached about 13 years ago. Sabre Nigeria has,
however, found ways around the problems to break into the market in the
last 10 years.
“It is indeed a long journey that has not been smooth in terms of
infrastructure support, especially power and internet challenges. But
here we are today delivering solutions. Today, we are between 18 to 20
per cent market penetration and by 2020, it will be 30 per cent.
“Almost all IATA agents now distribute on Sabre. From zero, we have
moved to almost 1000 agents. Non-IATA agents are many. Almost all the
airlines are on Sabre, except our Nigerian airlines, because some of
them are so weak. ,” he said.
Senior Vice President, Europe, Middle-East and Africa, Dean Bibb,
congratulated Sabre West Africa, for a market share of zero to over 20
per cent and production of over 700,000 bookings per year.
Bibb said: “The background to this achievement should not be
underestimated. The combination of currency fluctuations, an unstable
aviation sector, fuel shortages, fragile technology infrastructure and
political changes, is a challenging and demanding environment to do
business in.”
He added that coming into Nigerian market to offer the travel
solution was a stepping stone to entering Ghana, South Africa, Kenya,
North Africa and the whole African market.
Bibb explained that the mobile (phone) is the vehicle for the travel industry, and Sabre has built a platform that allows travellers to get any available solution using the mobile phone.
“So, we can tell you if the flight is late, what gate to go to and
others right on your mobile phone. The future is very bright for the
continent. Nigeria is just getting out of recession but it has a growing
population, with fantastic coverage of internet and wireless and 94 per
cent of mobile penetration in the market. Out of the 170 or 180
million, to see four million travelling on the technology platform is a
potential market for us. This is an area that we will grow in the
future,” Bibb said.
Managing Director of Spring fountain, Babatunde Fagbemi, said the
problems in the aviation sector would have been minimal if operators are
really getting involved and sourcing right technical information from
people that know.
SOURCE:-guardian.ng
