After an eventful and turbulent start to this decade in travel, 2023 was the year travel demand regained its stride, and artificial intelligence hit the mainstream
Now that thestorm has largely passed
, we are left with one certainty: people still love to travel, but the pace of digital transformation is shifting traveler trends. With everything one click away, travelers are putting a premium on personalization, quality and speed of service, and price transparency. Travelers are looking for new ways to stand out from the crowd with more customized and meaningful experiences. In addition, sustainability is at the forefront of many people’s minds, encouraging travel businesses to be transparent when it comes to their environmental impact. Finally, fast-paced changes in the travel industry are encouraging travel sellers to adapt their tech-stack to serve travelers better.
So how is Amadeus adapting to these changes? In 2023, Amadeus made great progress withNDC , and continued to prioritize partnerships and innovation across the board. Here’s a snapshot of our highlights this year:
Making great strides with NDC
The New Distribution Capability isn’t so new anymore. NDC is making enhanced retailing a reality, increasingly helping airlines and travel sellers get more creative in how they tailor offers for travelers. This year,SAS ,Eva Air ,Air Canada , andVirgin Atlantic are the latest carriers to extend their partnerships with Amadeus to enhance their shopping experience in all distribution channels, giving travel agents around the world the ability to book NDC-sourced content through the Amadeus Travel Platform. The Amadeus Travel Platform is a one-stop shop that brings together all relevant global travel content - including air, accommodation, rail, mobility, insurance, and destination from all sources including NDC and low-cost carriers, into a single platform.
This is the year we have seen increasing NDC adoption among travel sellers, which continues to gain pace.AERTiCKET , one of the world's largest airline ticket consolidators, extended its longstanding partnership with Amadeus to benefit from NDC-sourced content via theAmadeus Travel Platform .
Meanwhile, in the world of corporate travel, leading B2B travel management companiesBCD Travel andAmerican Express GBT renewed their strategic long-term agreements with Amadeus, providing their corporate clients with more content options, including NDC-sourced content, in an efficient, scalable way.
Ourpilot project with Trip.com and a partner airline on the NDC Offer Repository gives us confidence that the NDC scalability challenges related to top-of-the-funnel searches can be overcome for the benefit of online travel agents (OTAs), metasearch engines (MSEs), airlines and, of course, travelers.
The Amadeus Travel Platform is more global than ever
This year, Amadeus extended and created new partnerships all over the world with the Amadeus Travel Platform.
In France, the country’s leading rail carrierSNCF renewed its distribution agreement with Amadeus to make it easier for travel sellers to book rail and high-speed train tickets. Following the signing, Amadeus will also play an active role in extending the distribution of SNCF low-cost subsidiary Ouigo's content to travel agencies in France. This is a promising development for travelers looking for sustainable travel options in Europe in particular.
Flag carrier of India,Air India, furthered its expansion with Amadeus through new domestic content and NDC distribution deal. Across Asia, some new airlines hopped on the Amadeus bandwagon:Bhutan Airlines signed its first distribution agreements with Amadeus to gain more international visibility with travelers. Amadeus partnered with Bangladeshi travel agency,Flight Expert , so that travel agents will be able to access the Amadeus Travel Platform. They are joined by theLion Travel Group , Taiwan’s largest travel agency, which started collaborating with Amadeus to support its expansion plan beyond Taiwan and across Asia Pacific. The collaboration will see Lion Travel implement NDC as well as Master Pricer Instant Search to make the first step in its digital transformation and smart retailing journey.
Big innovations in corporate travel
As corporate travel spend slowly rebounds to pre-pandemic levels, we’re seeing a new rise in bleisure and a resurgence of interest in group travel bookings. That’s why the corporate travel space has been an area of focus for us this year, with some exciting new partnerships and innovations announced.
Most recently, Amadeus announceda strategic partnership with Microsoft and Accenture to develop an AI-powered travel assistant that will combine the best of the travel and expense platformCytric Easy with Microsoft 365. The generative AI-powered travel assistant will help corporate travelers book their journeys in a conversational style and propose appropriate travel options that are aligned with traveler preferences and employer policies.
Another exciting partnership is withAmadeus Cytric and Emburse Chrome River , a global leader in spend optimization. This relationship delivers more choice to enterprises that are looking for an integrated suite of modern, sophisticated travel spend management tools, without having to compromise on quality by being tied to a single vendor.
Another first is withAir France-KLM Group which became the first airline partner to add the Amadeus Cytric portfolio to its offering for corporate customers. The partnership is considered a major milestone for Amadeus, allowing Air France-KLM customers of any size to adopt Cytric solutions.
Global B2B travel management company,CWT Travel , as well asGant Travel andCampbell Travel in the US andDER BUSINESS Travelin Germany are now also offering Cytric Easy, the Amadeus online booking tool, to its customers. Cytric Easy, now embedded in Microsoft 365, allows employees to search, book and pay for business travel easily and seamlessly. Using the Cytric Easy integration with Microsoft, travelers can search, compare and book a hotel, flight or car rental – without ever leaving Microsoft Teams.
How passion and partnerships will keep travel thriving in the digital age
There’s no question that the digital world is changing at an exponential rate: the pandemic helped speed the pace of touchless technology and in the last few months, generative AI combined with cloud technology has dramatically changed online search as we know it. We’re just seeing the beginning of a new technological revolution that will have transformative effects on the travel experience, contextualization and the world around us.
At Amadeus, we are deeply curious and passionate about technology, but we’re also open minded. We know that no single person or organization has all the answers, so we look both within and beyond for our next groundbreaking idea. That’s why 2023 has been a year in which we celebrated establishing new partnerships, we well as expanding many existing ones with world-renowned travel and technology brands around the globe. Our strength lies in this ecosystem approach: we create communities that bring together the best talent so we can deliver the best solutions.
As the world continues to evolve, you will find us on the cusp of change, always anticipating the future of travel. Working with our customers and industry partners hand in hand, we have no doubt that we can make the travel experience more meaningful for everyone.
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