It's now a tradition that's firmly established in the busy business travel calendar. Like every year, ahead of a IFTM-Top Resa Amadeus invited the press on Thursday morning to take stock of the new products that will be unveiled in the coming days, and more generally to take stock of Amadeus' activities. When it comes to this business, the plural seems to be the order of the day. With a great deal of investment - 600 million euros injected into Research & Development last year, for a total of more than 4 billion since 2004 - the GDS has transformed itself into a vast travel ecosystem, combining distribution and technological solutions. " A giant IT services company "says George Rudas, CEO of Amadeus France. In addition to indirect distribution, Amadeus' historical activity, we have gradually added reporting tools such as Amadeus Gestour Analytics, tools dedicated to the management of Travel & Expense (T&E), such as Cytric, not forgetting the IT services entrusted to Amadeus by so many airlines.
But the real 'new star' in the spotlight on the morning of September 15 is Amadeus Selling Platform Connect: a 100% web interface that aims to mark a turning point in leisure and business travel management. " Travel agents will be telling you all about it for the next five years "says Alexandre Jorre, Marketing Director of Amadeus France. This new interface, adapted to all media, should enable travel agents to manage their customers' journeys wherever they are, and whatever their equipment - including Apple. A clever way of responding to the development of the home office, which is becoming increasingly common in France.
In addition to the platform's portability, Amadeus is playing the efficiency card to promote the merits of this Amadeus Selling Platform Connect. The figures back this up. Those in charge of the project point to time savings of 49 % on repetitive and complex tasks, and 68% for ancillary costs - services that are becoming increasingly common, particularly in the airline sector. Unofficially launched a few months ago, Amadeus Selling Platform Connect has since passed the 100,000 user mark worldwide. The French market is in the process of being migrated, and the transformation should be completed in eighteen months.
However, Amadeus has no intention of stopping there. The technology specialist will soon be making official the integration of Booking Pal, a player in which it has already invested in the recent past, and which will enable this ecosystem to integrate collaborative content: one of the keys to Travel Management today and - no doubt - tomorrow.
