Looking back at a year of travel technology

Here’s a recap of just some of the stories we’ve covered on the blog this year:

Throughout the year, we’ve participated in several hackathons. The Vistara hackathon, held in both Delhi and Bengaluru, was one of India’s largest aviation hackathons on #DisruptioninAviation. Participants were equipped with APIs and tools from technology providers, including the Amadeus Travel Innovation Sandbox.

In August, together with Finnair, we joined the IATA NDC Hackathon in Silicon Valley. Both companies provided an NDC API platform to developers using a Sandbox that helped them design and deploy travel applications. The Sandbox included NDC messages that enabled the developers to generate an end-to-end booking flow using the API.

Finnair, Skyscanner, and Amadeus joined forces to boost conversions withAltéa NDC . This allows travellers have a better view of the range of airline offerings and book the offers directly in Skyscanner, without interrupting the shopping flow.

Amadeus has been very active in the NDC standard since its inception. Gianni Pisanello spoke about the importance of NDC and our upcoming Level 3 certification at the WPS in Barcelona.

We partnered with Off Airport Check-In Solutions (OACIS) to launch world’s first‘ pop up’ airport check-in service allowing travellers to drop off their bags at a convenient location. With Amadeus’ Airport Common Use Service (ACUS) cloud technology, we can quickly provide travellers with an off-airport, fully mobile check-in service that can be set up at any location.

October saw us partnering with British Airways to pilot IATA’s new One Order standard . It is important for Amadeus that industry standards are developed in collaboration, taking into account the challenges and needs of the industry as a whole; and feedback from this pilot will be shared with IATA and other industry players to contribute to the development of the standard.

We also launched the whitepaper “Blockchain: harnessing its potential in travel ” in October, which shines a light on the many different areas of the travel industry where blockchain is beginning to have an impact, in addition to providing a window into the wider development of the blockchain industry itself.

Amadeus Airport Pay was launched with Ingenico in June, and is the first wireless payment solution in the industry which accepts EMV (Europay, MasterCard and Visa) chip card payments and can be used by multiple airlines and ground handlers and multiple banks.

At the annual Phocuswright Conference in early November, Amadeus showed its ongoing support of innovation and travel technology as a full sponsor of the event. Open house sessions and workshops were held including Amadeus for Start-ups, Amadeus Travel Payments, Search and Shopping, and Amadeus Travel Media and Advertising

You can find all of our travel technology posts here .