re travel agents and other reservations offices added to the system, new services hotel, rail, and rental care reservations were also added (Hooper, 1990).
The SABRE system eventually became a computerized reservations system (Hooper, 1990). It is by far the largest of such systems now in existence (Copeland and McKenney, 1988). Today, SABRE is neither a proprietary competitive weapon for American Airlines nor a general distribution system for the airline industry, It is an electronic travel supermarket, a computerized middleman linking suppliers of travel and related services . . . to retailers like travel agents and directly to consumers like corporate travel departments" (Hooper, 1990, p. 122).
In the early 1990s, SABRE terminals are in use at travel agencies and other travel retailers in 47 different countries (Fortune, 1990) at more than 14,500 separate locations (Hooper, 1990). The system "provides fares for 665 airlines, as well as information on price and availability for more than 20,000 hotels, and 52 car rental companies" (Fortune, 1990, p. 46). Because of SABRE and competing CRSes, travel agents account for more than 80 percent of all airline passenger tickets in the early 1990s, compared to less than 40 percent in 1976 (Hooper, 1990).
SABRE has a CRS market share of 40 percent (Hooper, 1990). It leading CRS competitor is the Apollo System (Hooper, 1990). Travel retailers, such as travel agents, who are on the SABRE network are not required to remain with the system. A period of approximately 30 days is required for a retailer to exit SABRE and tie into a competing CRS network (Hooper, 1990). Many airlines, not just American Airlines, participate in the SABRE CRS (Interavia, 1989).
In the SABRE database alone, there are 45 million fare listings, and up to 40 million changes are entered each month (Hooper, 1990). During peak operating periods, SABRE processes approximately 2,000 messages per second...