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Revenue from Contracts with Customers
 12 Months Ended
Dec. 31, 2020
Revenue from Contract with Customer [Abstract]  
Revenue from Contracts with Customers
2. Revenue from Contracts with Customers
Contract Balances
Revenue recognition for a significant portion of our revenue coincides with normal billing terms, including our transactional revenues, SaaS revenues, and hosted revenues. Timing differences among revenue recognition, unconditional rights to bill, and receipt of contract consideration may result in contract assets or contract liabilities.
The following table presents our assets and liabilities with customers as of December 31, 2020 and December 31, 2019 (in thousands):

AccountConsolidated Balance Sheet LocationDecember 31, 2020December 31, 2019
Contract assets and customer advances and discounts(1)
Prepaid expenses and other current assets / other assets, net$88,850 $105,499 
Trade and unbilled receivables, netAccounts receivable, net253,511 539,806 
Long-term trade unbilled receivables, netOther assets, net38,156 38,250 
Contract liabilitiesDeferred revenues / other noncurrent liabilities176,956 167,832 
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(1) Includes contract assets of $8 million and $6 million for December 31, 2020 and 2019, respectively.
During the year ended December 31, 2020, we recognized revenue of approximately $20 million from contract liabilities that existed as of January 1, 2020. Our long-term trade unbilled receivables, net relate to license fees billed ratably over the contractual period and recognized when the customer gains control of the software. We evaluate collectability of our accounts receivable based on a combination of factors and record reserves as reflected in Note 8. Credit Losses.
Revenue
The following table presents our revenues disaggregated by business (in thousands):
Year Ended December 31,
202020192018
Distribution$582,115 $2,730,845 $2,651,407 
IT Solutions(1)
594,579 992,155 977,534 
Total Travel Solutions1,176,694 3,723,000 3,628,941 
SynXis Software and Service156,749 257,612 240,583 
Other17,879 35,268 32,496 
Total Hospitality Solutions174,628 292,880 273,079 
Eliminations(17,222)(40,892)(35,064)
Total Sabre Revenue$1,334,100 $3,974,988 $3,866,956 
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(1) Includes license fee revenue recognized upon delivery to the customer of $31 million and $34 million for the years ended December 31, 2020 and 2019, respectively.
We may occasionally recognize revenue in the current period for performance obligations partially or fully satisfied in the previous periods resulting from changes in estimates for the transaction price, including any changes to our assessment of whether an estimate of variable consideration is constrained. For the year ended December 31, 2020, the impact on revenue recognized in the current period, from performance obligations partially or fully satisfied in the previous period, is immaterial.
Unearned performance obligations primarily consist of deferred revenue for fixed implementation fees and future product implementations, which are included in deferred revenue and other noncurrent liabilities in our consolidated balance sheet. We have not disclosed the performance obligation related to contracts containing minimum transaction volume, as it represents a subset of our business, and therefore would not be meaningful in understanding the total future revenues expected to be earned from our long-term contracts. See Note 1. Summary of Business and Significant Accounting Policies regarding revenue recognition of our various revenue streams for more information.
Revenue during 2020, particularly in the second quarter, was negatively impacted by increased cancellation activity. We estimate future cancellations using the expected value approach at the end of each reporting period based on the number of undeparted bookings, expected cancellations and an estimated rate. Our cancellation reserve is highly sensitive to our estimate
of bookings that we expect will eventually travel, as well as to the mix of those bookings between domestic and international, given the varying rates paid by airline suppliers. To address this change in estimate, we increased our reserve for future cancellations during the year to account for the significant effect that COVID-19 has had on the travel industry and the resulting volume of airline travel cancellations and the impacts on the booking fee rate for higher international cancellations and lower international new bookings than previously experienced. The combination of actual cancellation activity and significantly fewer bookings resulted in a cancellation reserve of $18 million as of December 31, 2020. The cancellation reserve as of December 31, 2019 was $34 million on a larger base of undeparted bookings. Given the continued uncertainty caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, we expect variability in the amount of our cancellation reserve in future periods as estimates of cancellations may differ from historical and recent experience.
Contract Acquisition Costs and Capitalized Implementation Costs
We incur contract costs in the form of acquisition costs and implementation costs. Contract acquisition costs are related to new contracts with our customers in the form of sales commissions based on the estimated contract value. We incur contract implementation costs to implement new customer contracts under our SaaS revenue model. We periodically assess contract costs for recoverability, and our assessment resulted in impairments of approximately $10 million and $2 million for the year ended December 31, 2020 and 2019, respectively. See Note 1. Summary of Business and Significant Accounting Policies for an overview of our policy for capitalization of acquisition and implementation costs.
The following table presents the activity of our acquisition costs and capitalized implementation costs for the years ended December 31, 2020 and 2019 (in thousands):
Year Ended December 31,
20202019
Contract acquisition costs:
Beginning balance$23,595 $21,298 
Additions5,590 9,378 
Amortization(7,314)(7,081)
Ending balance$21,871 $23,595 
Capitalized implementation costs:
Beginning balance $175,968 $189,448 
Additions17,301 28,588 
Amortization(37,094)(39,444)
Impairment (1)
(9,562)(2,405)
Other(901)(219)
Ending balance$145,712 $175,968 
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(1) Includes an impairment charge related to a specific customer of $4 million and $6 million in other impairments for the year ended December 31, 2020.