Sabre’s CEO on Finding Growth in a ‘Very Bumpy Year’

Sabre is regaining ground after a tough year, President and CEO Kurt Ekert told Skift after the company’s third-quarter earnings call on Wednesday. But the recovery looks more like a crawl than a sprint, as global headwinds continue to weigh on performance.

“This has been a very bumpy year — obviously the government shutdown [and] earlier in the year, the start of tariffs and the continuation of tariffs,” said Ekert. “You’ve got a few wars going on around the world. There were questions of consumer sentiment and demand that have abated a bit. But the backdrop has been challenging.

“I feel like, against that backdrop, we’ve been performing pretty darn well.”

For a company that connects airlines and hotels, then distributes their inventory to travel agencies, those are no small obstacles. Some of the same forces already hit its results in the previous quarter.

The latest results offered a mixed picture: Revenue beat expectatio