DESPITE a 61% contraction in revenue to €2,174.0 million and a 123.9% decline in profit to a loss of €302.4 million in its 2020 results, Amadeus continues to push ahead with new partnerships and New Distribution Capability (NDC) initiatives to drive advanced travel retailing.
In announcing its 2020 results, Luis Maroto, president & CEO of Amadeus, commented: “Despite a slight improvement in air traffic in the last quarter of the year, travel remained depressed in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic. As such, the year finished with global air traffic declining by -65.9%compared to 2019. The situation still remains fluid.”
In Distribution, its travel agency air bookings fell by 81.5%, to 107.6 million and in IT Solutions, passengers boarded declined 65.4%, to 690.6 million.
The company carried out cost-saving measures to the tune of €500 million in 2020.
Said Maroto, “We closed the year with €3.5 billion in liquidity thanks to the different initiatives we took in that area. This, along with our digital and customer-service transformation measures and our move to the cloud , will help us navigate these challenging times and come out of them stronger and even more competitive.”
One key initiative is the strategic partnership with Microsoft as travel tech companies look beyond the industry for alliances to drive the travel industry forward and beyond recovery.
The partnership will see the acceleration of moving Amadeus’ technical platform to the public cloud, and Microsoft will become Amadeus’ preferred cloud provider. In addition, Amadeus and Microsoft will focus on joint innovation and product development on travel solutions, and collaboration to create new hyper-personalized services and industry offerings tailored to the travel ecosystem.
In NDC initiatives, it renewed its content distribution agreement with American Airlines and included in the agreement is NDC-enabled content that will go live globally in the Amadeus Travel Platform in the coming months.
This new content will equip travel advisors to purchase a Main Plus offer, which includes a Main Cabin Extra or Preferred Seat along with an additional free checked bag and Group 5 boarding privileges. This new feature will be for all NDC-enabled agencies booking travel on any American-operated flight.
“This achievement marks the beginning of a new way for us to engage with our customers. Thanks to the successful implementation of this new technology, we’re able to create more personalized travel offers and services for our passengers,” said Neil Geurin, managing director of digital and distribution, American Airlines.
Another milestone was reached when CWT, the Business-to-Business-for-Employees (B2B4E) travel management platform, announced the successful creation of its first-ever GDS sourced New Distribution Capability (NDC) transaction in production via Amadeus cytric Travel & Expense booking tool for American Airlines.
“Another innovative milestone successfully completed with our partners, and a further development in the NDC story,” said Erik Magnuson, CWT’s vice president of product management, mobility & payments.
This was followed by a partnership with IAG to distribute the airline group’s NDC offering – including British Airways, Iberia, Aer Lingus and Vueling – to travel agents through the Amadeus Travel Platform. British Airways and Iberia NDC connections to Amadeus are targeted for the second half of this year, with Vueling following in 2022.
Said Maroto, “Despite the shock to travel last year, many of our customers continued to invest in technology for future growth. We signed new NDC contracts while agreeing important deals in our IT Solutions segments and expanding our content agreements. In Hospitality and Airports, we saw increasing interest from our customers in our business intelligence and self-service solutions. We remain optimistic about the future of travel and are confident that once movement restrictions are lifted, travel will resume, and the industry will flourish once more.”
• All images credit: Amadeus
