EmQuest: Travel Distribution in the Digital Era

Name: EmQuest: Travel Distribution in the Digital Era (English version)
SKU: 618040

Lakhani, Karim R.; Yucaoglu, Gamze

Product #:618040

Supplier:Harvard Business School

Discipline:Operations Management

Setting:United Arab Emirates, 2017

Details:Case (PDF) • 19 pages • 2018-02-22

Subjects:

Business models Change management Competitive advantage Competitive strategy Decision making Emerging markets Growth strategy Information systems Service management Strategy Value creation Corporate strategy Decision making and problem solving Economics Technology and analytics Business management Business management Operations and supply chain management

Geography:

United Arab Emirates

Your Price:

$12.40

Purchase this material with a free Educator Account and enjoy more benefits:

Free Educator Copy
Free Teaching Notes
Build your coursepack
Discounted academic price

EmQuest, Emirates Group's travel distribution company, must decide what to do with its contract with the global distribution system it uses, Sabre. Since its founding in 1988, EmQuest, was servicing travel agents in the MENA region by providing a connection to over 400 airlines as well as numerous other travel suppliers. EmQuest mainly relied on Sabre to provide this service to the agents, and its contract was coming to an end. In the last decade years, since the beginning of EmQuest's Sabre contract, while EmQuest grew, a lot happened in the travel industry: the Internet transformed customer habits, low-cost carriers emerged, and the Middle East experienced a boom in tourism. The conditions under which EmQuest had first signed its contract with Sabre a decade before were much different in 2017. With change happening so rapidly and impacting the fundamentals of the travel business model so dramatically, it was a real challenge to predict where the industry would be in the next decade. Yet the management needed to make a decision regarding the Sabre contract in 2017, amidst such a whirlwind in the market.

Learning Objectives

This case provides an opportunity for students to appreciate and learn: How a major player in an ecosystem gets affected by technological changes and trends. The different factors a company needs to consider in a fast-moving sector to remain competitive. How digitalization changes industries and how respective players need to shape their strategies to stay in the game.