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Roughly 400 developers walked into a Sabre hackathon recently in Mountain View — and skipped the search box, writes Travel Technology and AI Reporter, Adriana Lee. Instead, they went after the stuff travel's never digitized: voice agents that call hotels for answers, pull scattered reservations into one place, and rebuild trips when flight plans fall apart.

Beyond the tech, the event was a bid by Sabre to court outside developers, opening its back-end systems through APIs and an agentic marketplace. That kind of openness is still rare: Expedia, Booking.com, and Amadeus have largely kept their core systems closed or partner-limited, leaving unresolved how far — and to whom — travel's AI tech tools should open up.

Skift Playbooks: Reaching Travel’s Decision Makers

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Sabre Hackathon Highlights Travel’s Developer Access Divide

Sabre Hackathon Highlights Travel’s Developer Access Divide

by Adriana Lee

Hand developers a blank slate on travel's infrastructure, and they don't rebuild search. They go after the phone calls and broken connections travel never digitized — a clear sign on how new or external builders see travel AI's biggest pay-offs.

The Quiet Reinvention of the Hotel Tax

The Quiet Reinvention of the Hotel Tax

by Rafat Ali

The modern American hotel tax was built on one Las Vegas idea from 1955. The argument now is over who controls the money.

Returning to Park Hyatt Tokyo: How a Great Hotel Survives a Renovation

Returning to Park Hyatt Tokyo: How a Great Hotel Survives a Renovation

by Colin Nagy

Park Hyatt Tokyo proves that preserving a great hotel is less about furniture than judgment. The renovation succeeds. The harder task now is ensuring the next generation of hoteliers can inherit the culture that made the building matter in the first place.

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That is more than 2,000 aircraft per year for the next two decades, roughly 20% more than the industry has ever delivered in its best year.

In this bonus episode of Airline Weekly Lounge, Gordon Smith and Meghna Maharishi sit down with Boeing's Vice President of Commercial Marketing Darren Hulst to break down what that demand outlook actually means for airlines, manufacturers, and the future of the global fleet

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