Alex Irving: Hi, good morning. Two for me, please, if I may. First of all, just thinking about your GDS unit booking fee. That was up 9% year-on-year in the third quarter and 11% in the fourth quarter. What’s driving that acceleration, please help us to disaggregate into its constituent parts? My second question, more on the cost side of things. Do you have any leeway on travel agent incentives as a lever to reduce costs and improve your EBITDA? Is that something you could cut? Or is it something that you would cut? Thanks.
Kurt Ekert: Alex, thank you — on the first piece, which is the average booking fee. Remember that’s looking at all components of revenue as compared to the units of air booking. And so you have a few things going on. One is the mix of the type of air booking we’re getting globally. The other is that as we grow our land, ground, and sea bookings, which grew at a very strong rate through the year. And secondly, with payments, you’ll see that accrue in to the average revenue per booking. With respect to the incentive structure, we compete in a vigorous industry economics, which are one of the mechanisms by which we compete, which is a very normal construct for a B2B industry. And we value the business that we get from our buyer or agency customers. So, I’m not going to comment prospectively on the way we view that, other than say, it’s a competitive dynamic along with content and technology and product and service.
Alex Irving: Thanks.
Operator: Thank you. And our next question is coming from the line of Victor Cheng with Bank of America. Your line is open.
Victor Cheng: Hi. Thanks for taking my question. Maybe first of all, I want to break down a bit more on the corporate travel. I believe we can broadly bucket down to manage corporate travel versus unmanaged corporate travel. And I think managed corporate travel, which is where GDS over-index is — has been recovering a bit slower. Do you think this is structural or this will reverse over time with more managed corporate travel coming back? And then secondly, can you provide any comments on the high contribution? Is it — has it started to implement, I think you said in start of 2024, so should we expect some revenue contribution this year? And then finally, you talked about this earlier on the call as well. But on the 2025 outlook about the GDS growth that you’re making, can you talk a bit about some of the tailwinds and headwinds because when I think about — in the last couple of years where it’s more domestic and more leisure, that’s why GDS growth has been slower versus the air travel.
But in the next year or two, should we not expect international and especially corporate to recover more. And so GDS to be recovering in line or at least not flat growth versus the broader air recovery? Thank you.
Kurt Ekert: Victor, thank you for the three questions. This is Kurt. Let me take them in order. First of all, on corporate travel, you’re right. What we look at when we talk about corporate travel is largely managed corporate travel, which is what largely transacts through TMCs. And if you look structurally, that’s a business that on a unit basis, is about three quarters of the size it was globally versus pre-COVID. If you read all of the analyst reports and you listen to market conjecture, signs are that corporate travel will grow prospectively very well. I believe on a 20-year CAGR, you’re proceeding COVID, corporate travel or managed corporate travel had grown basically at 4% to 5% per year to a $1.3 trillion industry. So, again, you’d say structurally today, it’s a smaller industry.
And the question going forward, will it grow at that historical rate or may grow faster because there’s still some recovery left in there. There’s a wide range of potential scenarios, and I think that’s uncertain, but we’re confident that, that growth is going to come. And again, we think we’re very well-positioned because we are proportionately more highly indexed against TMC and corporate travel than our competitive peers. With Hyatt specifically, as we indicated, we’ll be beginning the implementation of Hyatt in the first half of this calendar year. And we’ll see that ramp up, we think, starting in Q2 pretty well going forward. The last question is about headwinds and tailwinds on our 2025 outlook with respect to GDS market growth. As I indicated in my prepared remarks and the question earlier, with respect to both corporate travel recovery prospectively or growth.
And two, international long-haul capacity coming back more robustly in the years ahead, we feel very optimistic and confident that we’re going to see both of those trends continue. OTAs have obviously performed relatively well during COVID, and I mentioned some level of Direct Connect activity there. But if based on the conversations we’re having with this clientele, we think there’s recapture and growth opportunity there as well. So, I’d say that a lot of the headwinds that the GDS market has faced, we have faced here through the COVID recovery period. Our hope and our optimism is that we’re going to see more tailwinds prospectively than what we’ve realized in recent years.
Victor Cheng: Okay. Thank you.
Operator: And I see no further questions in the queue at this time. I will now turn the call back over to Mr. Ekert for any closing remarks. .
Kurt Ekert: Thank you everyone again for joining us this morning. We do appreciate your interest in Sabre and look forward to speaking with all of you again very soon.
Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude conference for today. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.
