Sabre’s New Developer Platform Is Open to All

Sabre has opened the front gate of its developer community, providing anyone who signs up with access to developer tools, APIs and, in some cases, sample source code without going through an initial vetting process.

A new platform called Sabre Dev Studio is intended “to increase the pace of innovation,” Greg Webb, president of Sabre Travel Network, said.

“It’s the right time to open up the Sabre environment to developers in a way we never have before.”

Sabre is targeting a broad community of developers, including those at online travel agencies, travel management companies, meta search sites, and startups that want to incorporate travel into their applications, Sean Arena, chief commercial director, online & emerging business, said.

Learn, test, launch
The portal, at developer.sabre.com, is divided into three sections:

•    Learn, where developers can read documentation and view a demo gallery;

•    Test, where they can register to get a test key, “play in the sandbox” with the APIs and develop a prototype;

•    Launch, where they can request a production key and provide additional information to move forward in a relationship with Sabre.

The Learn section includes descriptions of REST APIs that enable new air shopping experiences, including inspirational and theme shopping and intelligence services to help users make more informed choices, such as a low-fare forecaster.

It also includes SOAP APIs to enable customization of applications with an end-to-end workflow tailored to particular needs.

Demo gallery
The demo gallery includes videos of how the apps work in real life. For example, one video depicts how flight search works with Google Glass (and yes, the users look delightfully dorky).

Sabre will migrate its full complement of 150 APIs to the portal by August.

Among the tools that developers can use is the Sabre Red App Developer Toolkit. Resources include links to commonly used industry information, such as IATA codes, and a glossary of standard industry terms.