The difficulties of the past year were unprecedented in many ways. While the year is new, many challenges remain, and most hoteliers must continue focusing on solving the immediate crisis: occupancy. Given this challenge, the industry is leaning on wide distribution as the ideal solution to restoring the most essential source of revenue. Within the crisis, however, are opportunities to reinvent – to grow revenues well beyond traditional lodging products and seek unified reservation platforms that avoid the pitfalls of traditional hospitality technology. The hotel technology landscape remains highly fragmented. As a result, hoteliers have a range of suboptimal choices available when pursuing digital transformation objectives. Purchasing point solutions require hoteliers to build an extensive array of integrations. This complex integration web results in fragile and unreliable systems, operational headaches, and high costs. The other choice is an internal custom-built system that spans the hospitality value chain. Although this approach can achieve the cohesiveness desired, the costs associated with this approach put hoteliers at a permanent competitive disadvantage, as they are unable to benefit from the significant economies of scale and the high rate of innovation that platforms offer. Given these considerations, what is the best option? The SynXis Unified Platform. Created to provide the industry with a better choice, the SynXis Platform delivers the scale and economics expected of the world’s largest distribution platform, seamlessly connects the technologies you need into one cohesive ecosystem, and enables a highly differentiated experience for both the brand and the guests. The SynXis Platform is built from the lens of hoteliers – driving commercial performance, enabling operational excellence, and delivering a seamless experience for guests and employees because the platform just works. To ensure continued optimization and enhancement of this robust platform, the Sabre team identified three focus priorities to support the hospitality needs of today, as well as the demands of tomorrow. Technology Roadmap We made significant progress in refining the roadmaps for our technology, platform, and property management products for the direct distribution, indirect distribution, and intelligent retailing suites of solutions. These roadmaps serve as our north star, allowing us to focus on the solutions that will benefit hoteliers most. Decision Transparency For our organizations to navigate these unpredictable times, Sabre and hoteliers must move forward together. That means the transparency we’ve always valued must remain the hallmark of the relationship we have with our clients. Both parties must understand the rationale behind decisions and have opportunities to provide input where appropriate. Process clarity and transparency will help us make better decisions, execute on those decisions, and better deal with the unanticipated challenges that always come along. Reinforcing Capacity As the travel industry looks to recovery and hotels begin restoring occupancy, we will continue reinforcing our capacity to serve customers through our technology and support services. We’re further strengthening our teams of high caliber technology professionals to produce the best results for our clients. The year 2020 was about survival and adaptation. Hospitality organizations and Sabre both had to transform and reposition at an incredible pace to emerge from the most adverse circumstances that the hospitality industry has ever faced. Because of your resilience and our commitment, the year ahead promises recovery, opportunity, and growth. Thank you for being a part of our journey. Let’s turn the page. Our best days are ahead. ~ Justin ~