Payments FinTech Nuvei has integrated its platform with travel software firm Sabre.
The integration, announced Tuesday (April 25), will let Sabre offer its partners a “superior customer payments experience,” helping them maximize card payment approval rates, boost revenue growth, and “reduce customers lost due to false declines.”
In addition, Nuvei lets Sabre offer clients more than 600 alternative payment methods for their online checkouts via one integration, the companies said in a news release.
The integration is happening at a time when — as PYMNTS wrote earlier this month — doubt has crept into the travel sector.
“While airline stocks soared on the 2022 travel resurgence as COVID restrictions fell like dominos across Europe, then ultimately Asia, some operators sounded notes of caution in fourth-quarter earnings reports, or more accurately, their outlooks for 2023,” we wrote.
Among the companies readying the investors for an “anything can happen” year was vacation home rental platform Vacasa.
“Today, we are operating in an environment that is more dynamic relative to the prior two record years,” CEO Rob Greyber said during the company’s quarterly earnings call last month.
“While I’m optimistic about Vacasa’s long-term potential, I see challenges which are fixable, but not yet fixed.”
Language like, “As the industry exits this period of record growth …” strikes a less optimistic tone than was uttered throughout the travel and hospitality space through 2022, and Greyber also noted Vacasa had slashed its workforce by 17% in the prior months.
Some of the unease comes from Wall Street analysts who are balancing sweeping tech company layoffs against record-high prices for airfares, hotel rooms and restaurant meals, all of which spiked last year amid historic inflation. Still, demand remained undimmed to year’s end.
In January, however, Barron’s reported that analysts were “getting jittery about online travel stocks, as the economy softens both in the U.S. and Europe. Concerns about the outlook spurred downgrades Wednesday for both Booking Holdings and Airbnb,” each of which issued strong financials in the fourth quarter and throughout 2022.
As for 2023, the ranks of high-paid luxury travelers have shrunk thanks to the tech sector layoffs, leading to ripples into the finance space and related areas. And as households continue to live paycheck to paycheck and cut spending on nonessentials, it’s unlikely they’ll want to shell out for a costly vacation.
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