A new era for the travel industry?

Amadeus reviews the changes that the travel industry is currently undergoing and shares with you our vision of the future.

Dear all,

The travel industry has reached a turning point. Corporate Social Responsibility, green travel, ecological issues, etc. are some of the key words that are now part of our business environment as they have significantly impacted corporations’ travel policies. One example is the boom of rail as high-speed rail travel is increasingly popular for short-haul journeys of less than 3 hours.

At the same time, our industry is on the point of being transformed by the generalisation of mobile technologies. Smartphones are evolving into multi-media devices that are also direction finders, paperless boarding passes, room keys, traveller security enhancers and payment methods. Mobile technologies offer corporations greater influence and control over travel behaviour, permitting increased automation and integration of processes.

The business models are evolving, distribution strategies are adapted.

There is, nevertheless, also friction in the industry. Despite a long history of working successfully together, Amadeus, Lufthansa and Swiss are currently engaged in a widely-publicized debate regarding the introduction of their Preferred Fares Programme. According to the programme, Lufthansa and Swiss propose to surcharge travel agencies Eur 4.90 per segment for using the GDS. This programme became a discriminatory surcharge against Amadeus travel agents in May, when Lufthansa and Swiss announced agreements with Sabre and Travelport that removed the surcharge for bookings made on those systems.

With the introduction of the discriminatory surcharge Lufthansa and Swiss breached our contract, and so we are in the process of taking legal action against them. In the meantime, we will re-imburse the cost of this surcharge to our agencies until the end of 2008 or until we reach an agreement with the two airlines. We expect to recover the cost of this reimbursement from Lufthansa and Swiss at the conclusion of the legal proceedings.

On more optimistic topics, we interviewed for this issue two of Amadeus customers about what keeps them ahead of the competition. easyJet's Jerry Dunn talks about his company's strategy for the corporate travel market and the recent partnership with Amadeus. Mike Bor from Expedia Corporate Travel — who recently changed their name to Egencia — explains what drives his company's success.

Technology becomes an enabler that standardises, facilitates and collaborates. It is now integrated to each step of your supply chain.This is why, at Amadeus, we continue investing in technology to offer you the right tools and help you succeed in adapting to the new environment. In this edition you will read about how we are bringing innovative booking solutions to rail travel with a unique distribution platform for multi-content systems. You will also find out how our pre-payment tool Moneydirect will simplify and automate your payments for non-air products.

I hope you enjoy this issue. If you have any suggestions or comments regarding this newsletter, I will be happy to hear from you.

 

Gillian Gibson
Vice President Multinational Customer Group