Sabre debuted its new travel agency desktop last summer and now has upgraded its graphical capabilities.
With the enhancements, Sabre Red Workspace enables agents optionally to book air, hotel and car in a graphical format and they can toggle between the graphical interface and the classic Sabre blue screen, Sabre says.
Actually, they can also use traditional cryptic commands within the graphical view, Sabre says.
The graphical upgrade gives agents some of the tools, such as calendar-based shopping as well as map-based search for hotels, that have become Web standards for consumers.
Sabre uses MapQuest for the hotel maps. So, there is no Street View, as is available with Google Maps.
Sabre says the new graphical capabilities will speed agent training, enable them to better access low fares and ease the shopping for ancillary services.
Graphical interfaces have been around for years on agency desktops. In fact, Sabre first introduced graphical capabilities in the mid-1990s. But graphical capabilities within agency desktops have never gained much traction among agents, who often see their green-screen -- in Sabre's case, blue-screen -- commands as more efficient.
Sabre is running a beta test of the graphical view in 50 agencies globally and plans to roll it out domestically and internationally later in 2011.