HEDNA highlights distribution challenges and opportunities

The Hotel Electronic Distribution Network Association (HEDNA) is the most established specialized Hotel Distribution forum in the industry, an association created by hoteliers for hoteliers and key partners and players.HEDNAbrings hotel distribution knowledge together in one place. Its members like me, share knowledge and best practices to make the most of hotel distribution technologies and to discuss new opportunities and trends.

Coming to the HEDNA conferences allows us to learn about new and not so new topics; have formal and informal discussions with existing and potential business partners and meet friends old and new.  For me, it’s the best place to learn about our industry, network and do business. Therefore I am really delighted to have been re-elected to the HEDNA Board by industry colleagues for a third two-year term.

Every year, Amadeus participates at both HEDNA winter and spring conferences in the US and Europe. This week at the winter conference in New Orleans, we shared the latest hotels updates from Amadeus. Hoteliers are excited to hear about Amadeus’ commitment to the hotel industry especially following our announcement in December of theacquisition of Newmarket International.

We took the opportunity of being in New Orleans with key customers to have a dedicated session to showcase solution advances for example the Amadeus Hotel Search Engine andAmadeus Web Servicesplus our intuitivenew business intelligence solutionwhich allows our hotel partners to track and identify business opportunities via highly visual and user-friendly dashboards.

As Amadeus continues to grow travel agency market share globally, this gives our hotel partners greater reach allowing them to efficiently target new markets and customer segments. This week we discussed how we can grow business further together in the Americas and I was delighted to moderate a HEDNA conference session exploring the enormous business potential that exists in Brazil, which touched upon a number of key topics for companies that want to operate in the country. This included the notion that they need to be ready to change their business model to adapt to the specific needs of this country. The Brazilian market is larger than France, Mexico, Australia and Monaco combined – this fact coupled with the upcoming World Cup and 2016 Summer Olympics makes Brazil an especially intriguing market for travel players, but as the panel highlighted, businesses need to be able to communicate in Brazilian Portuguese, and also have Brazilian speakers in call centres and at the properties where they want to attract Brazilians.

With over 280 attendees, this is the busiest HEDNA ever, and as a HEDNA Board Member I have been delighted to welcome new attendee profiles apart from the usual hotel companies, such as many online travel agencies wholesalers and payment solution providers who have joined the event for the first time. So as networking in New Orleans wraps up, here’s to a jazzy year for the hotel industry. Amadeus is proud to be a part of it.