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Published on August 28, 2007

Now Amadeus, a leading technology provider for the travel industry, is moving towards a new technology development to support personalisation.

For two decades Amadeus has provided IT systems to airlines, travel agencies and tour operators, corporations, hotels and even transport-rental companies.

Amadeus Asia's president in Asia Pacific, David Brett, said that as the competition in the travel industry was increasingly severe, technology was a key tool for businesses to increase competitive advantages. To win the hearts of customers, the development of a system to provide personalised service would play an important role in the future travel business.

He said customers in the future would require specific rather than general services, so it's necessary for those in this business to be concerned about customers' personalised experience.

"We see in the next five years travel services will be much more customised to serve each individual and this will make them willing to pay for the services," he said.

To serve the future trend, Amadeus has developed systems to allow businesses in the travel industry to manage their customer experiences so they can provide appropriate services.

Amadeus Altéa is an example of the company's IT system designed to manage customer records for travel businesses, especially airlines. The system is integrated in a suite of Customer Management Solutions (CMS) developed to address operational efficiencies and improved customer loyalty and revenue.

Brett said the company developed the system based on a single community platform, which could be adapted to the evolving needs of carriers.

Amadeus Altéa replaces the legacy system used in airlines with a new generation CMS that allows airlines to unlock the value of each traveller and turn passengers into customers. Brett said the company provided the Altéa system under an outsourcing model allowing airlines to use it and pay service fees instead of investing to build their own systems themselves.

It comprises reservation, inventory and departure control systems.

Amadeus Altéa Reser-vation is the first step in transforming passengers into loyal customers, enabling airlines to increase sales across a range of distribution channels to drive growth and better serve customer needs regardless of how they book.

The second component, Amadeus Altéa Inventory, enables airlines to quantify and control inventories across the entire sales and operations environment, from the sales office or e-commerce website through to departure control.

The last component is Amadeus Altéa Departure Control. It redefines departure control systems by taking advantage of Altéa integration to embed customer value in every decision made at the airport. Altéa Departure Control streamlines operations in the two key areas of customer management (check-in) and flight management (load control).

Around 150 airlines around the world are using at least one core component of the company's Altéa system.

During the past two decades, Amadeus has sold the Global Distribution System, a computerised reservation system and processor of travel bookings, allowing the travel-reservation process to be effectively done from just one point.

The system has been at the heart of the travel industry, with technology designed to deliver opportunities and efficiencies to travel providers, sellers and buyers. The system is now also used in around 90 countries around the world.

Brett said IT systems were key products for Amadeus, so each year the company spent around ¤180 million (Bt8.1 billion) in research and development.

Amadeus has its own staff to design and develop all the systems. Its key development centre is in France. Of over 7,600 employees worldwide, around 3,000 are technology experts, working on a variety of Amadeus technology models, including software development.

Brett said to push the company towards future trends in tourism and travel, the company also thought ahead by developing new technology-based products and services to serve future travellers.

The company has also worked with Henley Centre HeadlightVision, a strategic future and marketing consultancy firm, to conduct research on Future Traveller Tribes 2020 to describe trends fuelling the technologies that could enhance the travel experience from booking to arrival.

In the report, four groups of future travellers were identified. They are active seniors aged between 50 and 75; global clans, an individual or group travelling internationally for holidays; cosmopolitan commuters, a group of individuals living or working in different regions; and global executives travelling in premium class.

To develop services to fit each target group, the report said communication technologies, distribution systems and sensing and identification technologies would enable travel providers to deliver a more efficient and personalised experience at all stages of a customer's journey, from booking, check-in, in-flight, and arrival through to baggage collection.

Brett said the report would help the company understand future trends and better plan to develop technology-based services to enhance customers' personalised experience.

Pongpen Sutharoj

 The Nation