InformationWeek

The timing is good. The online travel business is "very robust," says Forrester Research senior analyst Henry Harteveldt. According to a recent survey conducted by Forrester, 71% of consumers will buy airline tickets online during the next 12 months, 65% will book a hotel, 37% will reserve a rental car, 20% will buy a vacation package, and 12% will book a cruise.

Sabre, the technology unit of American Airlines Inc. that spun off from AMR Corp., has plenty of first-hand E-commerce experience. It handles 1 billion customer hits a month for the 700 Web sites that connect to it for booking airline, hotel, and car-rental reservations. Millions of those transactions are from its own sites: Travelocity.com, the top consumer travel site, and Business Travel Solutions, a leading online business-travel booking service.

In the brick-and-mortar world, Sabre is the largest global distribution system for travel, handling 400 million reservations from more than 40,000 travel agencies worldwide last year.

Sabre's consulting service will offer advice on "everything a customer needs to establish an online presence," including choosing technology, managing call centers, and fulfilling orders, says Andres Fabris, director of E-commerce business development. "In the past, our consulting has focused on systems operation. What's new is the focus on E-commerce and on integration with third parties."

Sabre will work with several technology platforms, Fabris says, including those from Ariba, fusionOne, Oracle, and Passkey.com.