Since its launch, it’s had 1,000 app downloads from 42 countries and more than 60 new third party developers have signed up to develop apps for the Centre.

“This will change the travel space. It allows access to developers to build apps for travel agents and we’re seeing some exciting innovations,” said Webb.

Asked if it would ever be opened up to building of consumer apps, he said that while it was not the intention to have a consumer app centre, “there is potential for some of the players such as GetThere and Tripcase, to allow third party developers.”

He believes in the potential of the Red App Centre to come up with something that would change travel the way he believes Sabre and Travelocity changed travel (by moving it online) and GetThere changed corporate travel.

Said Webb, “We will continue to provide a set of services that are unique in the way that other third party services, whether direct consumer or corporation, will find useful.”

For instance, one big area is the unbundling of services – “it is difficult for corporations to determine if they are getting value for what they pay. As a service aggregator, we can help the customer make better informed decisions.”

On a visit to Singapore, Webb observed that while markets in Asia are at different stages of development in online travel, the region is close to reaching inflection point, at which time growth will accelerate “pretty fast” before it levels off.

Drawing from experience in the US and Europe, he said it was timely and critical for traditional travel agents to “define what you want to be and what kind of business you want to run”.

“If you are an offline player, you have to ask, should I go online and what does that mean? Should be I be a niche player, should I be a country player or a full service specialist?”

On its part, he said Sabre Travel Network was putting resources into understanding how consumers and its customers, travel agents, will interact with devices. “We have a team focused on studying customer behaviour. Mobile will bring a different way of interacting and the touch screen graphical interface will become more prevalent.

“We are a data and service aggregator and our role is to build the most robust set of services for developers.”

While the distribution business still remains the largest at the Sabre group, Webb said airline IT and hotel revenues had doubled.

Asked if there was a direct co-relation between airline IT and distribution business – ie, does it mean because you’ve won a major airline contract, your distribution business will also grow – Webb said, “I think it’s more of a halo effect.”

He said the GDS side of the business would see slow, steady growth – “more of a market share game” – while the services business would grow dramatically.

“We see a stronger focus on product and service and less on incentives, moving forward.”