Mr. Offutt brings over 20 years of experience in information technology, IT management and travel industry dynamics to Phocuswright. He was most recently the chief architect and senior vice president for Sabre Holdings where he defined the strategy and plan to migrate from a monolithic Mainframe environment to distributed open systems and a service oriented architecture. Prior to being Sabre's chief architect, Bob founded and led Sabre Labs, a technology incubator that made Sabre the industry leader in new online products and services. Before Sabre, he spent 26 years in the U.S. Coast Guard, where he led the agency's information technology unit. Bob has also served on the faculty of the University of Puget Sound, George Washington University and the University of Southern California. His education includes a B.S. in engineering from the U.S. Coast Guard Academy and a master's degree in management science from the U.S. Navy Postgraduate School.
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Bob Offutt's Areas of Research
Bob Offutt is a travel technology visionary. His vast experience and hands on leadership in travel distribution make place him firmly at the forefront of innovation in travel. In his role as editorial director of Phocuswright's Innovation Edition and a leader of The Travel Innovation Summit, Bob Offutt knows how to identify the trends, technologies and platforms that will define the future of travel.
Speech Recognition and Natural Language Processing
Category: Technology Innovation Published: June 2017 Analysts: Bob OffuttTraditional machine interfaces such as keyboards, tablets and joysticks have long been the weak point in fully integrating computers into our everyday lives. Speech recognition and speech response...
Artificial Intelligence for Travel
Category: Technology Innovation Published: May 2017 Analysts: Bob OffuttArtificial Intelligence (AI) is quite possibly the most exciting computer development since the creation of the web. Businesses and product developers have just begun to understand the enormous...
The Digital Mesh: The Future?
Category: Technology Innovation Published: March 2017 Analysts: Bob OffuttIn the 1980s, the personification of the digital migration was the IBM Personal Computer. Now, nearly 30 years later, we are seeing things never thought possible even by Negroponte. Like the influence...
New Distribution Capability (NDC): It’s Only Just Begun
Category: Technology Innovation Published: March 2017 Analysts: Bob OffuttIn 2013, after much discussion and diplomatic efforts to avoid alienating any constituency, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) petitioned the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) to...
Lufthansa’s Direct Connect Play: Trend or One-Off?
Category: Technology Innovation Published: October 2016 Analysts: Bob OffuttAirfare shopping and booking, once a cut-and-dried symbiosis between travel agents, global distribution systems (GDSs) and airlines has begun to unravel over the past 15 years. Not that the...