Sabre Finally Figures Out A La Carte Shopping

(MoneyWatch)  It's been a quiet morning at PhoCusWright so far, so I thought I'd go back to an interesting point from yesterday. Sabre showed up as one of the "innovators" and announced that it was finally going to be able to support a la carte pricing, or as they called it, "attribute-based shopping."

All I can say is . . . it's about damn time.

For how many years has Air Canada offered this functionality? It seems like ages. And the airlines have been moving toward this idea for quite some time. So it's incredible that it's taken the GDS's this long to catch up. But I suppose we should just be thankful that they've finally gotten to that point.

The product they showed allows airlines to incorporate ancillary revenue sources like checked bags, premium seat assignments, etc into the booking process. This should help increase revenues at the time of booking and make it easier for travelers so they don't have to keep breaking out their wallets at the airport. Finally.