Sabre's Blitzcode fosters travel tech innovation in Bengaluru

Sabre Bengaluru GCC has announced the successful conclusion of its annual innovation event, Blitzcode, which is now in its sixth edition. The event highlighted Sabre's focus on using advanced technology to address real-world challenges in the travel and hospitality sectors.

Participants competed in two categories. 'Eureka Gallivant' tasked participants with devising solutions to significantly impact customers, enhance existing products, and introduce new functionalities to drive growth and revenue. The 'Strong Core' category focused on making products more stable and secure, improving overall quality, and increasing customer satisfaction. Participants utilised the latest Gen AI technologies and cloud platforms such as Google Cloud to develop sophisticated solutions in response to complex industry issues.

This year's Blitzcode saw over 35 teams comprising more than 200 employees who coded and prototyped for over 1000 hours. Their efforts were recognised in an awards ceremony, where Kurt Ekert, Sabre's President and CEO, presented cheques and certificates. The top honour was awarded to "Team Optimization Jedis" for their innovative idea for an in-house AI explanation tool. "GenRO Innovators" secured second place, and "SkyGuardians" took the third spot. Additionally, 15 teams will receive the 'Making a Difference' prize for successfully deploying their solutions within six months, highlighting the event's tangible impact.

Sriram Gopalswamy, Vice President, Site Reliability Engineering and Managing Director at Sabre Bengaluru, praised the significance of Blitzcode. "Beyond the competition aspect, over the past several years, Blitzcode has been an exceptional catalyst for upskilling and fostering innovation by motivating our team members to solve business challenges for our customers. We take a lot of pride in the solutions that have emerged from Blitzcode, which will not only propel growth for our customers, but will have an undeniable impact on the travel ecosystem as a whole," he said.

Garry Wiseman, Executive Vice President and Chief Product Officer at Sabre, shared his enthusiasm for the event's outcomes. "I was thrilled to see the innovation and collaboration that was on display this year during Blitzcode - an event that embodies Sabre's unwavering commitment to innovation, collaboration, and fostering a culture of problem-solving for our customers. While many organisations look at coding events such as this to develop blue-sky ideas, Blitzcode is a unique initiative that focuses on creating real-life solutions to use in everyday operations. The benefits can be seen as direct improvements in our offerings and accelerated deployments for our customers," he stated.

Blitzcode 2024 has again underscored the power of collaboration and innovation at Sabre Bengaluru GCC. The event enabled teams to tackle significant industry challenges, producing production-ready solutions that will undergo rigorous testing over the next few months before being rolled out to Sabre's customers and partners.