Singapore, 08 July 2009 – Abacus International, the region’s leading travel facilitator, continues to dominate in the fast growing online travel bookings sector with an estimated market share of 70%.
Abacus’ Vice President of Marketing, Brett Henry said the company’s industry-leading records in Asia Pacific’s online bookings indicated that this ‘new-age’ distribution channel has come of age and has marked its importance as a main revenue stream for many travel agencies.
“With the online sector expected to grow rapidly as more Asian travellers move online, we are delighted with the strong online market penetration we have established with our travel agency partners in Asia’s leading online markets such as South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong and India. Over 70% of all online travel bookings are processed through the Abacus GDS system,” Mr Henry said.
With almost 1 in 5 of all bookings made each year through the Abacus system coming through online sources, Mr Henry said that the online sector has shown remarkable stability through the otherwise volatile market of the past 12 months.
Whilst sales through traditional agencies have spiked and troughed several times online bookings held steady throughout the second half of 2008 before commencing a strong rise in the first half of 2009 with 13% growth in 1Q2009 and 30% growth in 2Q2009.
Fuelling the growth, Abacus has kept in step with its online travel agency partners’ needs through the launch of the new Abacus e-business constellation suite earlier this year. The launch of Abacus WebCreate and Abacus WebStart also now helps traditional agencies to add an online component into their businesses. These have seen strong adoption in China and Indonesia and new launches are planned for the other markets in 2009.
“Given the rapid rate of growth and change in new online channels, we are proud of the way Abacus has anticipated these developments and built a strong leadership position in the region’s online travel booking sector. Going forward we will continue to innovate to support our distribution partners to compete in this dynamic new space,” Mr Lim Lai Hock, Abacus’ Director of Online and Portfolio Strategy said.
About Abacus International
Singapore-based Abacus International is the Asia-Pacific's leading travel facilitator with more than 15,000 travel agency locations in 25 markets. With over 20 years of experience in fusing international best practices and local expertise with global and local partnerships, Abacus provides travel information and reservations specifically tailored to the Asia-Pacific region.
Abacus International is owned by Sabre and a consortium of Asia's leading airlines including All Nippon Airways, Cathay Pacific, China Airlines, EVA Airways, Garuda Indonesia, Dragonair, Philippine Airlines, Malaysia Airlines, Royal Brunei Airlines, SilkAir and Singapore Airlines. Sabre is the global leader in the electronic distribution of travel and travel related services.
More information on Abacus can be found at www.abacus.com.sg.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Where can i get the Quick Reference Guide of Abacus Automatic Ticketing. Please send me the PDF file to my mail kanhaiyadass@gmail.com
ReplyDelete