Enriched Amadeus hotel marketplace drives agencies' profitability

Madrid, Spain, 23 April 2014: Amadeus, a leading travel technology partner and transaction processor for the global travel and tourism industry, today announced a new-generation hotel distribution marketplace for the travel industry that will bring buyers and sellers of hotels together more efficiently. The marketplace can be accessed via Amadeus’ travel agency retail platform (Amadeus Selling Platform), our corporate online booking tool (Amadeus e-Travel Management) and by any third party through our web services.

The ‘multisource’ marketplace now provides seamlessly integrated content from all hotel sources into one format within the platform, so bookers can access all their favourite providers through a single interface. The depth of integration means bookers’ search results appear in a standardised format, which makes comparison shopping quick and easy. This allows the agency to get the best offer for their customers in record time as well as providing them a more efficient service. Sophisticated search algorithms, caching technology and progressive display features deliver sub-second response times.

Unlike other systems, the marketplace will be adaptable to reflect its customers’ different business models: content can be managed in real-time at different points of sale to reflect a commission-based model, a service charge or net-rate/mark-up model, or negotiated rates, depending on the booker.

Andreas Posmeck, Managing Director, GIATA, said: “Amadeus’ hotel marketplace brings together hotel content from many different providers and channels. Our analysis of this content shows that the level of accuracy is unbeatable. No other distributor that we are aware of has such a wide hotel offering.”

Barry Higgott, Operations Manager, Horncastle Executive Travel, said: “We’ve been piloting the new version of Amadeus Hotels for two months. Being able to search, compare and book hotel offers via a single interface drastically cuts the time needed for our agents to find the right hotel deal. Having everything in one place and fully integrated also means we can manage our customers' trips end-to-end more efficiently and deliver even better service and customer care throughout.”

Massimo Callegari, Air and Sea Director, Costa Crociere, said: "As a travel retailer, the latest upgrades to Amadeus Hotels give us quick access to a huge range of hotel properties and rates that fit perfectly in our staff hospitality needs. These upgrades will allow us manage our hotels business more profitably as the solution accelerates and simplifies not just the search, book and payment process but also our mid- and back-office operations and hotel contract management."

Amadeus has over 690,000 hotel shopping options in production covering over 235,000 unique properties. This comes from agreements with regional and global hotel providers such as Albatravel, Bedsonline, Despegar.com. Destinations of the World, GTA, hotel.de, HRS and Transhotel. Further partners in the pipeline include Sunhotels, Teldar, Travelboutique and Travelguru. This is in addition to almost 300 hotel chains, representation companies, and thousands of independent properties.

Peter Waters, Director, Hotel Distribution for Amadeus, said, “Amadeus has responded to the clear industry need of providing all types of hotel content – to suit both leisure and business travellers - in a single marketplace. This hotel content can then be distributed, with integrated booking capabilities, through all online and offline channels. This combination of broad, rich content, advanced technology and the ability to tailor the commercial model to the needs of individual customers is unique in the industry.”

For more information visit  www.amadeus.com/hotelsmarketplace.

About Amadeus

Amadeus is a leading provider of advanced technology solutions for the global travel industry. Customer groups include travel providers (e.g. airlines, hotels, rail and ferry operators, airports, etc.), travel sellers (travel agencies and websites), and travel buyers (corporations and travel management companies).

The Amadeus group employs around 10,000 people worldwide, across central sites in Madrid (corporate headquarters), Nice (development) and Erding (operations), as well as 71 local Amadeus Commercial Organisations globally. The group operates a transaction-based business model. Amadeus is listed on the Spanish Stock Exchange under the symbol "AMS.MC" and is a component of the IBEX 35 index. To find out more about Amadeus please visit www.amadeus.com.

About Amadeus Hotels

Amadeus offers next generation hotel management solutions based on open technology and offered as Software as a Service model (SaaS). Amadeus reinforced this position with the acquisition of US-based Newmarket International in 2013. Newmarket, with more than 40,000 installations and 150,000 users worldwide, delivers proven business solutions for empowering hospitality organisations to lower costs and increase revenue, while improving customer satisfaction and guest loyalty. In distribution, Amadeus connects some 300 of the world’s leading hotel providers with our global community of travel agencies with 235,000+ unique properties and with 690,000+ hotel shopping options distributed through custom-built reservation applications. Through Amadeus LinkHotel, Amadeus connects independent and small-chain hotels to the multi-GDS and online travel community.

For more information about Amadeus Hotels, please visit www.amadeus.com/hotels

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*1 - ‘Multisource’ is an initiative to bring together hotel content from multiple suppliers and sources on one platform.