[BayAreaEscapee]

This article was interesting because it described how Sabre and Amadeus came about in the first place, but (from my perspective as a consumer), they've done nothing incredible since the seventies. They did nothing but sit on their duopoly.

Even when the internet became popular, the first search engines (like Travelocity and Kayak) really sucked.

It wasn't until ITA Software came about that there was an honestly good and useful travel search engine. ITA is really the "technology that changed air travel" in the internet age.

[hef19898]

And almost all online booking services are using the same duopoly with the same legacy tech anyway.

As with all B2B backbone systems, consumers are hardly ever aware that the even exist. Power grids, pipelines, shipping, ERPs, airline booking all are systems people ignore until something goes wrong. And those systems are shielded from consumers by multiple layers of middleware and middlemen that hide the complexity of things.

Good for consumers, the downside is that the actual knowledge of hoe things works gets more and more concentrated on a very small group of experts that have to keep the lights on while proverbial Jane in Accounting or Bob in marketing don't like the UI and tech bro Chad prevers to move fast an brake things with management assuming agile is the solution to everything.

[alecco]

It's not a duopoly.

Around 2007-2008, Sabre went on an acquisition spree and bought the major clients of Amadeus around the world. Then proceeded to force them to use Sabre instead (quite inferior results and heavily biased towards AA and other related companies). And finally when the 2008 crash happened, did massive restructuring and layoffs on such companies. Even for profitable ones. Some were sold afterwards for pennies on the dollar. The hit and run on Amadeus worked.

Got to love central bank backed corporations. (0% interest loans of unlimited amounts)

Sabre is an invincible Goliath. Amadeus is a David just trying to survive.

Source: I worked for one of those companies at the time.

[cratermoon]

Technically there's a third, Travelport, the smallest, and there are a few others that serve regional markets.

You're right that existing GDS systems have done nothing interesting for decades, though. Did you know that Sabre charges their customers on a per-API call basis? Airlines like to minimize the number of times they call into Sabre for that reason. You might imagine that the Sabre people are not especially motivated to make their API simple and modular enough to lower the number of calls required.

[xxpor]

>Did you know that Sabre charges their customers on a per-API call basis?

The original cloud service!