GDS firm Sabre Travel Network has teamed up with Nigerian travel agency Interguide Air Limited in a bid to break into the sub-Saharan African market.
The Sabre Nigeria deal will see the Sabre GDS being marketed to more than 800 travel agencies across the country.
Sabre claims that 67 Nigerian agencies have already contracted to use its system, including three of the country’s six leading IATA-accredited multiples.
The company is now evaluating potential tie ups in other African countries.
“An ever-increasing amount of travel is being booked in countries right across the continent,” said Dean Bibb, Sabre Travel Network’s vice-president for the Middle East and Africa.
“The time is right for us to be expanding our presence beyond Europe and the Middle East, into the heart of this increasingly significant travel market.”
Sabre Nigeria will be run by Interguide chairman Gabriel Olowo, who aims to shift 25 percent of Nigeria’s travel bookings onto Sabre’s Internet-based MySabre booking platform by the end of 2007.
“We’re planning to bring the Nigerian travel industry into the 21st century,” said Olowo. “Agencies here have languished under sub-standard technology and a limited range of bookable travel products for far too long.”