Sabre Integration Creates Massive Growth Opportunity for Travel Planning Platform

A Need to Expand the Platform’s Reach

Christopher Eriksen, CEO and President of PlanItEasy, realised that for his company to grow, it was necessary to connect the PlanItEasy platform to Sabre’s global distribution system (GDS). This integration would enable the company to expand and serve the large industry population of travel professionals that utilised it. At the time, PlanItEasy was unable to accommodate GDS users and couldn’t capitalise on this sector within the industry. This Sabre technology integration would be the facilitator of exponential growth for PlanItEasy.

The global distribution system is essentially the “brains” of the travel industry, linking reservation inventory under one automated computerised network. The GDS delivers real-time information to sectors within the travel and tourism industries, including airlines, travel agencies, hotels, and car rental companies. It links services, rates, bookings, and inventory, centralising these products and services across all travel segments. Sabre is the largest GDS provider for air bookings in North America. Mr. Eriksen explained,

“Sabre is one of three GDSs in the world. It’s the largest one in the United States. It’s a booking engine that is purely focused on booking execution. In order to get client information into Sabre, you need to have a CRM that integrates with Sabre.”

Ramping Up with Top Talent

PlanItEasy has an in-house team of Sabre-authorised developers, but the team was maxed out and needed help taking on the project. Mr. Eriksen needed to acquire additional resources to augment his team and build an API that would make it possible to sync Sabre profiles data between PlanItEasy’s CRM and Sabre’s system, which was a very specific goal.

Mr. Eriksen was familiar with Chetu after meeting members of the global development company at an industry tradeshow. When he searched Sabre’s directory of authorised developers for this project, he found Chetu on that list. He decided to reach out and was pleased to learn about the company’s certified partnership with Sabre and extensive industry experience. The project was officially underway, with Mr. Eriksen stating:

“Chetu helped us supplement our team when we didn’t have the bandwidth. The cost was a positive factor; it allowed us to acquire resources quickly and ramp up as needed. Chetu helped us build a robust team – they delivered, and we are very grateful for that.”

The Skilled Approach

This project was completed using a Laravel 7 framework. This open-source PHP web framework supports the development of web applications that follow that model-view-controller (MVC) architectural pattern. This pattern refers to an application consisting of a data model (data handling, logic), presentation information (UI), and control information (interface). This framework provides flexibility and makes it easy for developers to make necessary changes. It offers features that include high performance, increased security, and scalability.

Additionally, Sabre REST and SOAP APIs were used for the integration, as well as an Apache 2.4 web server, AWS hosting environment, and PHP 7.4.3 scripting language.

Chetu’s skilled development team prioritised syncing profile information between PlanItEasy and the Sabre system. Ensuring this information would be updated and synched on both sides was critical. The flow of information needed to be bidirectional, where creating or updating a customer profile on the PlanItEasy side would also update the profile on the Sabre side. Any updates on the Sabre side needed to be pulled into the PlanItEasy platform automatically. To accomplish this, the initial stage focused on developing the middle layer API, which would serve as the bridge between the PlanItEasy and Sabre systems.

This API would send and retrieve profile information from Sabre and move profile data into the passenger name record (PNR) of the Sabre GDS. The PNR is a file in a computer reservation system’s database containing passenger itineraries. A separate API would be used in this step to assist with formatting and transferring the profile data seamlessly between platforms.

When asked about his experience during the development process, Mr. Eriksen explained,

“Chetu’s team was able to go in very quickly and understand the project. I have worked with other companies that had a hard time understanding what the goal was. So that was very positive. Chetu understood the goal and structured the project very quickly. They were very organised, hit deadlines well, and were excellent at keeping us updated on the progress.”

A Robust Partnership Yields Great Success

The project was successfully completed, and the PlanItEasy platform now operates with a fully functional Sabre integration – a boon for the company as it is already experiencing significant projected growth with new clients that utilise the GDS. Mr. Eriksen expressed his satisfaction after witnessing these outstanding results, stating:

“I can say that because of this integration, we’ve been able to grow our business with midsize and larger companies that book through the GDS, which before, we could not. That’s why we did this – several companies needed the GDS to commit to our platform. Right now, we are running pilot programmes with the larger companies, and they have been successful. We are creating our own customer success storeys, and the key part of that was this integration. We are excited and looking to launch it officially and go live within a couple of weeks.”

When asked about his overall experience with Chetu, Mr. Eriksen stated that he looks forward to working with Chetu again and would gladly refer the company to other enterprises needing development services. The CEO was pleased to recount,

“The GDS integrations Chetu built with the PlanItEasy team enabled PlanItEasy to foster new business relationships with those companies where the GDS was critical for booking execution and workflow. It opened up a new market of GDS users, which are generally midsize to larger agencies, to our platform and allowed us to grow. This crucial integration not only helped us access a new part of the market, but it has positioned us in a great place competitively – we can provide some of the new services that Sabre GDS’s APIs are offering that our competitors have not yet integrated with, so we have an advantage over them right now, thanks to Chetu’s involvement in this project.”

Do you have a plan for your company’s growth that a technology solution can help facilitate? Chetu has skilled digital transformation experts ready to take on your project, regardless of size or scope. With over 2,800 software engineers, Chetu brings extensive industry experience to the table and specialises in every area of software development. Our digital programming experts utilise the latest tools and technologies to provide our clients with the most cutting-edge solutions.