Sabre Partners with BYHOURS to Tap New Hospitality Industry Trend

Sabre Corporation (SABR) has noticed the growing demand for hotel microstays and is moving to tap into that opportunity. Sabre provides travel technology used by airlines, travel agencies, and hotels to run operations such as booking and check-in.

To that end, it has teamed up with Spanish company BYHOURS to introduce the ability to book hotel rooms by the hour to its community. Launched in 2012, BYHOURS operates a platform for hotel microstays. Hotels use its platform to offer hourly packages to people looking for short stays. The idea is that hourly packages provide people with flexibility in hotel reservations and can save them money.

The partnership opens up BYHOURS’ platform to travel agents that use Sabre’s system so they can sell hotel rooms by the hour. Demand for microstays has increased since the COVID-19 pandemic struck. Sabre says that the BYHOURS deal will let its agency community access the hotel visits that their customers demand. (See Sabre stock analysis on TipRanks)

“We are excited to provide Sabre-connected travel agencies the ability to further personalize the customer experience with BYHOURS’ unique microstay content,” said Traci Mercer, head of the product segment at Sabre Travel Solutions.

As companies adopt remote work, people are looking for flexible spaces to work or conduct important meetings. Sabre counts on the BYHOURS arrangement to address this demand and generate more value for its community.

On the back of Sabre’s first-quarter results, in which revenue fell short of expectations, Oppenheimer analyst Jed Kelly assigned Sabre stock a Hold rating without a price target.

“COVID-19 is severely impacting travel demand and creating structural challenges in forecasting earnings. Therefore, we wait for the industry to stabilize and earnings visibility to improve before recommending shares,” noted Kelly.

Consensus among analysts on Wall Street is a Hold based on 3 Hold ratings. The average analyst price target of $14.50 implies 7.41% upside potential to the current price.

SABR scores a 7 out of 10 on TipRanks’ Smart Score rating system, indicating that the stock’s returns are likely to align with the market’s performance.