Sabre is expecting an air bookings recovery through the summer and fall as long as the Middle East conflict subsides in the second quarter.
The distribution company reported first quarter 2026 revenue of $760 million, up 8% year over year. Adjusted EBITDA rose 21% to $159 million, while normalized adjusted EBITDA rose 21% to $169 million.
Kurt Ekert, president and CEO of Sabre, said the results had exceeded the Q1 outlook, adding that air distribution bookings had increased 6%.
“Through continued share gains, disciplined execution and our leadership role in next-generation, AI-powered travel solutions, we are confident in our ability to deliver sustained, long-term growth,” Ekert said.
Sabre has changed how it describes its business units, renaming distribution to marketplace and IT solutions to airline technology.
Marketplace revenue increased 9% to $618 million, attributed to a $42 million increase in transaction-based revenue. Marketplace bookings totaled 101 million, up 5% year over year.
Airline technology revenue increased 7% to $142 million in the quarter, attributed to revenue that was previously deferred being recognized, the company said.
Operating income increased to $116 million, up from $91 million year over year. Technology costs in the quarter remained flat at $175,000.
Ekert also provided an update on Sabre’s artificial intelligence (AI) developments including the recently launched air booking element as part of its partnership with Mindtrip and PayPal. Further enhancements, including hotels, will be unveiled in the coming months, he said.
He said the company has not talked about how the AI assistant might scale as yet.
“If you think about from the standpoint of what is the cost of revenue to an airline or a hotelier for the services we provide in our marketplace business, the cost average is about 1.5% of the value of the ticket or the hotels booked, which is, by almost any measure in this industry, and any other industry, a very, very efficient cost of sale,” Ekert said.
In a call with PhocusWire, Garry Wiseman, president of product and engineering for Sabre, said the company is excited to learn "through the data" from customers using the assistant and train its models further.
"That helps improve our ability to respond to the questions, improve conversion rates, etc. In terms of traffic, so Mindtrip itself has been growing over time. It's starting to get a lot of organic growth due to the fact that customers are recommending it to each other but also with PayPal stepping in to help out with its large ecosystem, to promote MindTrip as a channel for people to go and basically travel, plan and book."
Ekert also described demand for Sabre’s agentic APIs and MCP server as strong with more than 30 potential partners at pilot stage or in production. Wiseman later shared that partners ranged from startups to small and large travel management companies.
The company continues to work with airline customers to deploy an AI assistant to sit on top of its network planning and optimization product. The solution, which is in beta, will look for patterns, make recommendations and save time for network planners.
*This story was updated following Sabre's Q1 2026 earnings call.