Amadeus launches Cars Plus - a next generation booking engine for car rental

Madrid, Spain, 8 June 2010: Amadeus, a leading travel technology partner and transaction processor for the global travel and tourism industry, is launching a brand new car booking tool which uses cutting-edge technology to power a user-friendly interface.

Travel agents using the Amadeus Selling Platform (version 4.2 and above) will be able to access Cars Plus in any one of the 10 languages supported by our global booking solution. Marion Fuhrmann, Office Manager Pforzheimer Reisebuero, Lufthansa City Center observed: “making car bookings is now so simple, we can always find a product to match our client’s specific criteria, and the easy-to-use comparison functionality ensures we are offering customers the best rental arrangement available. In fact, with enhanced graphics, images and mapping features, Cars Plus looks and feels like a consumer website, but has the advantage of integrated and powerful Amadeus booking technology.”

In addition to the intuitive booking flow, Cars Plus includes exciting new features, providing agents with the best sales tools available to deliver superior customer service; advanced search options (e.g. search for car rental offers around a landmark or an address), multiple comparative availability displays, data pre-population from customer profiles and company/travel agency policies or extensive multi-media (car images, product icons, maps) amongst others. Equipped with a top of the range booking tool, that is so simple to use, agents will be able to generate customer loyalty and create instant revenue opportunities from increased car rental sales.

For car providers, Cars Plus delivers important merchandising opportunities. Guirec Grand-Clément, Sales & Marketing Director, The Europcar Group explains, “now we can really differentiate our brand using the rich multi-media options available with Cars Plus to highlight our car rental offering, bringing to life our locations, in-car features and add-on services’’. Guirec Grand-Clément adds “Cars Plus also helps enforce corporate and customer policy compliancy by matching each set of client preferences – an important feature for our business clients.”

“We have already seen in our pilot agencies that Cars Plus has had an immediate impact on car booking behaviour” said Jérôme Vanazzi, Director of Amadeus Cars, and added “agents are developing a greater confidence in booking cars and, more importantly, are seeing the immediate benefits of incremental revenue and the added value they can offer customers. In addition, Cars Plus integrates all booking information directly into the PNR (Passenger Name Record), resulting in improved agent productivity and data consistency from front to back office systems. With such positive feedback, we are excited about delivering Cars Plus throughout our agency network over the coming months.”

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Notes to the editors

Amadeus is the leading transaction processor and provider of advanced technology solutions for the global travel and tourism industry.

Customer groups include travel providers (e.g airlines, hotels, rail, cars rental, ferries, etc.), travel sellers (travel agencies and websites), and travel buyers (corporations and individual travellers).

The group operates a transaction-based business model and processed more than 670 million billable travel transactions in 2009.

Amadeus has central sites in Madrid (corporate headquarters and marketing), Nice (development) and Erding (Operations – data processing centre) and regional offices in Miami, Buenos Aires, Bangkok and Dubai. At a market level, Amadeus maintains customer operations through 72 local Amadeus Commercial Organisations covering 195 countries.

Amadeus is listed on the Madrid, Barcelona, Bilbao and Valencia stock exchanges and trades under the symbol “AMS.MC”. For the year ended 31 December 2009, the company reported revenues of EUR 2,461 million and EBITDA of EUR 894 million. The Amadeus group employs over 9,300 employees worldwide, with 123 nationalities represented at the central offices.

To find out more about Amadeus please visit www.amadeus.com
To visit the Amadeus Investor Relations centre please www.investors.amadeus.com


Contact details

Amadeus
Corporate Communication / Corporate Marketing
tel: +34 91 582 0160
fax : +34 91 582 0188
e-mail : mediarelations@amadeus.com