In 1953, C.R. Smith, the president of American Airlines, met Blair Smith, an IBM salesman, on a flight and developed the Sabre concept. The system was based on SAGE, the first major system to use interactive real-time computing, which IBM had developed for military use. Sabre Corporation was founded in 1960 by American Airlines. Sabre Corporation installed the first Sabre reservation system in Briarcliff Manor, New York that year. The system consisted of two IBM 7090mainframe computers and processed 84,000 calls per day. In 1964, Sabre's nationwide network was completed and became the largest commercial real-time data-processing system in the world. Sabre Corporation handled 7500 passenger reservations per hour in 1965. The Sabre system upgraded to IBM System/360 and moved to a new center in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1972. In 1976, the Sabre system was installed into a travel agency for the first time. This allowed travel agents to have instant access to flights. By the end of the year, 130 locations installed the Sabre system. Sabre introduced BargainFinder, the industry's first automated low-fare search capability, in 1984. The following year, easySabre was launched. It gave consumers with personal computers access to the Sabre system to make airline, hotel and car rental reservations. In 1989 The New York Times reported Sabre having "about 38 percent of the reservations market." In 1996, the company launched Travelocity, an online travel agency. Sabre formed a joint venture with Abacus International in 1998 to create the SabreSonic passenger solution, a customized version of Sabre's reservations system to Abacus subscribers in Asia.
2000s
, the parent company of American Airlines, spun off its controlling stake in Sabre Corporation in 2000 to form an independent company. In 2001, Electronic Data Systems purchased Sabre Holdings, and Sabre began migrating its old mainframe for air travel shopping and pricing to HP NonStop and Linux servers. In 2005, the company acquired lastminute.com, an online travel and leisure retailer. Texas Pacific Group and Silver Lake Partners acquired Sabre Corporation in March 2007. In March 2010, the company acquired Calidris, a revenue integrity and business intelligence solutions company. Sabre Corporation acquired SoftHotel, a web-based property management solutions provider, in June 2011. The company launched Sabre Red App Centre in March 2012. In April 2014, Sabre Corporation went public on NASDAQ under the ticker symbol SABR. The IPO sold for $16 per share and valued Sabre at $3.93 billion. The company acquired Genares, a hospitality technology company, that September. In December 2014, Bravofly Rumbo Group acquired Sabre European Online Travel Agency, lastminute.com. In January 2015, Sabre sold its Travelocity brand to Expedia, Inc. for $280 million. In July 2015, Sabre acquired Abacus International, a global distribution system based in the Asia-Pacific region. The deal included long-term distribution agreements between Sabre and the 11 Asian airlines that previously shared ownership of Abacus. In June 2016, Sabre announced Tom Klein would resign as CEO by the end of 2016.
Operations
The company is based in Southlake, Texas and has additional offices in London, Kraków, Bangalore, Montevideo and Singapore. In December 2013, the company handled approximately 85,000 data transactions every second for customers according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. At the time, the company did business with 70 airlines and 100,000 hotels. It operates under the platforms Sabre Travel Network, Airline and Hospitality Solutions.
