Announcing the purchase (price undisclosed), Julia Sattel, SVP, Airline IT, Amadeus said: “This is an important milestone for both Amadeus and our Airline IT division in particular. Loyalty is one of the key drivers connected to the core passenger servicing business of any successful airline, and being able to offer this service allows us to not only increase the value of our Altéa proposition but also to broaden our IT portfolio to better serve existing and future customers.”

Spanning anything from reservation to accounting, Amadeus IT solutions have never been able to natively focus on customer centricity, due to the lack of an integrated CRM and loyalty product.

These days airlines using Altea or other Amadeus IT products could either develop CRM and Loyalty in-house, or pick from a range of specialised solution providers or integrators, for example Loyalty Partner Solutions, AIMIA, Oracle, Comarch, Mercator and obviously Hitit.

Based in Istanbul, Hitit had been nurturing their CRM & Loyalty product like a baby prince, giving it the independence needed to self sustain in symbiosis with PSS provided by other competing IT providers. More importantly, the Hitit CRM & Loyalty product offers customer relationship management technology that empowers airlines to implement real-time recognition, based on live profiling and segmentation features.

In an era of social media and mobile, only the airlines which handle unstructured data in real time can successfully cater to the connected traveller. Amadeus is proving to understand this principle by acquiring cutting edge resources to secure the first place in the race for the most advanced (or less backward) PSS.

On a strategic level, Amadeus acquires a marketing capital by now offering CRM & Loyalty products to airlines which source vital IT systems from its competitors. Let’s consider Etihad Airways for example; Amadeus will be now getting a foot in the door by powering the Etihad Guest loyalty programme, while Sabre supplies the PSS. This could be an opportunity to build a relationship worth the next PSS contract.

This acquisition move leaves Hitit and Amadeus competing in the PSS space, although they are generally aiming at different prospective client sizes.

However, the player to fear at this moment is still hiding in the shadow; after the ITA Software acquisition, Google has not properly rolled out their ITA-powered PSS yet. Will it ever come? Some may argue that Google’s PSS will anyway never match Altea in terms of comprehensiveness and suitability for large network carriers; nevertheless being technologically surpassed is a risk not worth taking for Amadeus.

So let’s expect Amadeus to carry on with their shopping for the Big Data season.

Note: Sergio Mello (pictured above) is the CEO & co-founder of SATISFLY.