Amadeus taking Australia very seriously

Amadeus VP Asia Pacific eCommerce Peter Smith on a visit to Sydney this week told The Mole that we all know that self-service technology has been one of the biggest agents of change ever to have influenced the travel industry, but that we are only at the beginning of an adoption curve.  

He said, “The take up of customer direct sales in the leisure space in Australia through a range of sites including www.qantas.com , www.virginblue.com.au and others has shown that there is a clear willingness by leisure customers to adopt on line bookings and this is also exhibited in the USA and Europe.” “It  has not carried through to business travel, though, even though a range of solutions has been around for a long time.”  

“I believe that these solutions were not taken up by the corporate world in the past because of a range of factors including, cultural issues in organisations, not every employee having access to reliable technology and high speed internet, failure to ensure policy compliance and that travel was dealt with somewhere inside of procurement”.  

“It also has to be said that the solutions offered had had some deficiencies in terms of content and useability with the economics and ROI not as clear as they should have been to gain the required commitment, all these combining to cause the technology take up to be addressed more slowly than we would have liked”.

Peter added, “What has changed is that the online travel environment has now changed exponentially with new technology, smart additions, better features, broadband internet access across the corporate world, together with much greater usability”. 

“These have all combined to make on line travel very appealing to the corporate employee and providing what we believe is required to trigger adoption, with this evidenced by 1000 corporations globally and about 180 in Asia Pacific having signed up to Amadeus eTravel Management.” 

Peter stressed though that getting corporations to sign up to a solution such as Amadeus eTravel Management was only part of the job, with the really hard part being convincing employees to use it.  He said, “We work very hard with the leading Travel Management Companies, TMC’s to influence take up through training, adoption and a range of incentive programmes to encourage use of these very smart tools”. 

“Corporations are also now more willing to look at on line solutions because they are beginning to understand how it all works and how Amadeus eTravel can save them substantial sums of money.”  “This take up by corporations is also driven by the TMC’s becoming more efficient and sophisticated in packaging their services, now offering full service, on line and hybrid travel management offerings, because they realised that they had to change their business model to survive and take up new technology.”

When asked why a corporation should choose Amadeus, Peter responded saying that by being big and global means Amadeus can provide massive leverage and also amortise costs over more than 1000 customers, therefore providing better value.  He added, “Amadeus is without question the most advanced operator globally in this space, articulating and providing a truly IT global partnership and technology business.” 

“GDS is very competitive and while Amadeus is committed to being the world leader in GDS technology, we are not just about GDS and are committed to being the world leader in eCommerce in leisure and corporate travel and other areas.”  

“We believe that we also have ownership and leadership in the airline “e” space with 250 web sites in 80 markets in 40 odd languages, for example www.qantas.com and we have seen huge success in this space while also having designed Amadeus eTravel Management as the solution for the corporate space.

When asked about Australia’s relative global position, Peter said, “In the US and Europe, on line is without doubt the dominant means of reservation across the corporate and leisure world, with take up in Australia for leisure travel being strong but slower in the corporate world”. 

He added, “We believe that the setting in Australia is now perfect for corporate on line travel to take off over the next 12 months, with Japan also moving in that direction”.

“TMC’s are also critical to this process and they have had to renivent themselves, but I wonder sometimes if corporations fully realise the benefit and function of a good TMC which can offer much better control and tracking than ever before, offering corporate management a really serious way to track expenditure”.

Peter was joined by Andrew Knowlman, Amadeus’ local Australian National Business Manager who told The Mole, “One of the challenges in Australia was localising the product for the local market and example of how that is being achieved is that today Amadeus launched a new one way fares module”.  

He added, “The principle carriers in Australia fill their fares on a one way basis but globally that is not the case but one way fares are critical allowing corporations to access the lowest fare from any source and are what passengers are looking for and we can now guantateee that we can provide the lowest fare available in the market also giving the ability to travel on different carriers on different legs of a trip”.

The Mole asked Peter for a closing message for the Australian travel industry to which he responded, “The Australian market place is one where we expect to see significant growth in new solution activities in a range of areas but in particular we see significant growth in the corporate solutions area.” 

He added, “We see no reason why 50% of domestic corporate cannot be transacted on line and automated, following in the footsteps of leisure travel”.  “Traditionally corporate has led with leisure following, but the tables have turned with leisure leading in on line bookings while corporate take up has been slow, which is something we at Amadeus are determined to change.”

“The message from Amadeus is also very clear in that we will be expanding our services well beyond being simply seen as solely a GDS and content provider, with Amadeus becoming the recognised one stop shop right across the industry for all travel technology solutions – so watch this space!

Report by the Mole