Amadeus launches solution for online travel search to support airline partnerships

Madrid, Spain, 23 October: Amadeus, a global leader in technology and distribution solutions for the travel and tourism industry, has today launched Amadeus Meta Pricer; a solution which brings quality, global air content to travel search engines (meta search engines) and helps airlines to cost-efficiently maximise their distribution.

Travel search engines collect together travel content from airline and online travel agency websites, allowing consumers to search many different sources of travel information with a single search query. To retrieve their information, travel search engines generally use a technique called "screen-scraping". This puts a heavy strain on airlines' websites and internal systems, both in terms of performance and cost – and does not always yield accurate results for the travel search engine.

Amadeus Meta Pricer provides a reliable and cost-efficient connection between airlines and travel search engines which also yields better quality results for the travel search engine and, ultimately, the consumer. Amadeus Meta Pricer vastly reduces the strain put on an airline's system by travel search engines. Instead, the airline signals to Meta Pricer which fares and availabilities it wants to make available to which travel search engines; in turn, travel search engines query Amadeus Meta Pricer to retrieve all the flight information for the registered airlines. By consolidating search results from a range of sources, Amadeus Meta Pricer improves the stability and performance for travel search engines.

"Amadeus Meta Pricer is the latest addition to our fast-growing portfolio of technology solutions," says Ian Wheeler, Vice President, Marketing, Amadeus, "and is part of our strategy to develop technology to enable success in the travel and tourism industry. By following this strategy, Amadeus aims to become the industry's leading provider of technology services by 2010."

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Notes to the editors
Amadeus is the chosen technology partner for providers, sellers, and buyers of travel. The company provides distribution, IT and point-of-sale solutions to help its customers adapt, grow and succeed in the fast changing travel industry. Customer groups include travel providers (airlines, hotels, car rental companies, railway companies, ferry lines, cruise lines, insurance companies and tour operators), travel sellers (travel agencies) and travel buyers (corporations and travellers). Solutions are grouped in four solution categories – Distribution & Content, Sales & e-Commerce, Business Management and Services & Consultancy.

Amadeus has central sites in Madrid (corporate headquarters & marketing), Nice (development) and Erding (Operations – data processing centre) and regional offices in Miami, Buenos Aires and Bangkok. At market level, Amadeus maintains customer operations in 76 countries covering more than 215 markets.

The company is owned by WAM Acquisition, whose shareholders are BC Partners, Cinven, Air France, Iberia and Lufthansa. Amadeus employs nearly 6,700 employees worldwide, representing 95 nationalities. Amadeus' revenue for the six months year ended 30 June was EUR1,381.6m.

 metapricer_launch.pdf