Sabre Acquires Hotel-Tech Provider Genares as Competition Heats Up

Sabre acquired a fellow Texas company, Irvington-based Genares, a provider of central reservations systems software and digital marketing services for hotels.

Sabre Hospitality Solutions is an established player in the hotel-tech arena as its CRS was the largest third-party provider "based on our approximately 27% share of third-party hospitality CRS hotel rooms distributed through our GDS (global distribution system)," Sabre stated prior to its IPO in April.

Employees of Genares, which provides CRS, revenue management and hotel marketing solutions to independent hotels and chains, are joining the Sabre Hospitality Solutions division with the acquisition.

Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

The acquisition takes place as a very large hotel-disribution company, Booking.com, that has little experience as a CRS provider, is poised to expand into the B2B arena as a tech provider for hotels.

The Priceline Group, which touts Booking.com as its largest brand, this year acquired Barcelona-based Hotel Ninjas and Seattle-headquartered Buuteeq, and is busy integrating Hotel Ninjas' fledgling CRS with Buuteeq's hotel digital-marketing platform.

Genares, which provides similar services in their broad outlines to what Booking.com is contemplating, already boasts 2,300 customers among independent hotels and chains.

Sabre will benefit from adding these customers, and filling any hotels in its portfolio with Genares' services.

Sabre generated the lion's share of its $3.04 billion in revenue in 2013 from its travel agency network. Airline and hospitality solutions together accounted for 23.3% of that revenue, or $711.7 million.