Amadeus adds 4,000 new hotels to its system

• Amadeus increases its non-GDS hotel content
• New hotels all viewable through Amadeus’ award-winning Hotel Multimedia tool

Madrid, 4 May 2006: Amadeus, a leading provider of technology and distribution systems to the travel and tourism industry, today announced that Amadeus travel agencies in 75,000 locations around the world can now book over 4,000 additional hotels from hotel.de and HotelAG (Hotel Accommodation Group), not previously available through the Amadeus system. It has taken the total number of hotels bookable in Amadeus to over 61,000.

hotel.de offers Amadeus 2,000 new hotels, the majority of which are important venues for the business and leisure traveller in German and Austrian towns. HotelAG provides Amadeus with over 2,000 hotels in Europe, including Spain, Portugal, Greece, Italy, France and Germany, offering competitive rates for every taste and budget.

Heinz Raufer, Chairman of hotel.de states, “Travel agencies are increasingly specialising, handling more complicated bookings and offering more varied services. This content integration is an opportunity for us to benefit from each other. From our perspective, our hotels benefit from an additional distribution channel, where more than 75,000 travel agencies now have access to their inventory in 215 markets worldwide.”

The new hotels are available to off- and online travel agencies connected to Amadeus, including Opodo, and to corporate travellers via Amadeus e-Travel Management (Aergo). “Amadeus is continuously looking for opportunities to enrich its hotel content, as is highlighted by these two key hotel additions in our system,” comments Antoine Medawar, General Manager, Amadeus Hospitality. “We will continue to help travel agencies secure a profitable revenue stream by providing them with more essential hotel content.”

Travel agencies will be able to view photos of the 4,000 hotels, with rich text descriptions of the facilities, and have access to the hotels’ rates. The hotels will be available in Dynamic Access – the highest level of connectivity to the Amadeus system, offering real-time information and rates in both Multi- and Single Property Displays. Currently, over 75% of all bookings in Amadeus hotel reservation are made on Dynamic Access.

Amadeus awarded the 2005 European Seal of Excellence in Multimedia at CEBIT

Earlier in March, Amadeus was awarded the European Seal of Excellence for the dynamism and international scope of its Hotel Multimedia product at the CEBIT conference in Germany. This award is presented to companies with an excellent track record in marketing their products internationally. As a component of the travel agent windows based "front office" application Amadeus Selling Platform, Amadeus Hotel Multimedia provides travel agents with full access to multimedia content including general hotel images and room photos fully integrated in the reservation process. The multimedia content is also available to corporate customers and partners via the Amadeus application programming interface (API) and on Amadeus e-Travel Management.


About Amadeus
Amadeus distributes 61,000 hotels to 75,000 online and offline travel agency locations in 215 markets around the world. Hotel bookings through Amadeus doubled from 2001 to 2005, precisely the most difficult period for the travel industry, and continued to grow steadily throughout 2005. This performance is testament to Amadeus’ dedication to securing additional revenues, occupancy and therefore RevPar to our partner hotels. During 2005, Amadeus completed the development of Direct Connection technology and the implementation of nearly 4000 additional properties, many of them through our Otedis connectivity platform.

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.

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About hotel.de
hotel.de AG, based in Hamm und Nürnberg, Germany, runs a free of charge hotel reservation service for companies and private users on www.hotel.de, www.hotel.at and www.hotel.ch. hotel.de AG offers 180.000 hotels throughout the world to be booked online. Compared to other booking channels, hotel.de customers benefit from considerable cost savings. These partially result from the very low hotel rates which hotel.de is able to negotiate with hotels thanks to its high booking volume. Additionally, hotel.de always displays all rates available for every single hotel (e.g. promotional rates, corporate or weekend rates), so that the customer can choose the lowest or best-fitting rate. Another major advantage of hotel.de is the fact that booking confirmations are sent right into the hotel’s computer - making a reservation fast, safe and reliable. This is enabled by hotel.de's unique integration of the hotels' central reservation systems (so-called CRS) under one consistent user surface. Well-known companies, such as Wella AG (subsidiary of Procter & Gamble), SAP AG, ThyssenKrupp AG, degussa AG, Logica CMG GmbH, Ernst & Young AG, Wal-Mart, Texas Instruments Inc., Deutsche Börse Group, Munich Re Group and others already use the hotel.de corporate application.

Contact details
hotel.de AG
tel: +49 911-59832-0
fax: +49 911-59832-11
email: presse@hotel.de

About HotelAG
HotelAG, based in Palma de Majorca, Spain, is the initiator of an international Incoming Network for hotel chains, single hotels, travel agencies, ADS distributors and airlines, providing more than 26,000 properties worldwide. Amadeus is the latest member and extends the network by the distribution channel GDS. HotelAG is traditionally specialized in holiday resorts and properties in the most important European destinations and enlarges Amadeus offerings in this very profitable market segment. Travel agencies now have access on a broad range of holiday resorts for every taste and budget and have the chance to increase their revenues dramatically. Thanks to the close relationship between the network members, HotelAG is able to offer all properties with very competitive rates and high allotments. Another important advantage is that HotelAG works with several providers for each property and automatically selects the best available rate in real time. HotelAG is the only provider in Amadeus who works with vouchers that guarantee the room to the client and that the payment has been made. HotelAG offers different rate models with different payment conditions and commissions. All properties are offered with rates that include travel insurance. The travel agencies are able to offer their clients more choices and higher flexibility.

Contact details
HotelAG
tel: +34 971-425 162
fax:+34 971-425 163
email: hotel@hotelag.com