JetBlue Drops Sabre… Will Others Follow?
from the middlemen...-who-needs-'em? dept
Having just discussed a situation where middlemen probably do make sense online, JetBlue is showing that there are other areas where middlemen can be cut out. The popular airline has dropped out of Sabre, the electronic ticketing system — noting that it only accounts for 2% of the tickets they sell. JetBlue sells the vast majority of their tickets via their own website, so they have been able to go direct to customers. No one thinks JetBlue pulling out is a big deal, by itself, though some worry that others will follow suit. Of course, most other airlines don’t have such strong customer loyalty and awareness to just go to their site. Many travelers still book via various online aggregators — some of which pull from Sabre, but it gets confusing, because you basically have an aggregator pulling from an aggregator, which may simply be one middleman too many.
