Amadeus IT Group
Encyclopedia
Amadeus IT Group is a transaction processor for the global travel
and tourism
industry. The company is structured around two key related areas - its global distribution system and its IT Solutions business area. Acting as an international network, Amadeus provides search, pricing, booking, ticket
ing and other processing services in real-time to travel providers and travel agencies through its distribution business area
. Through its IT Solutions business area, it also offers travel companies software systems
which automate processes such as reservations, inventory management
and departure control
.
The group, which processed 850 million billable travel transactions in 2010, services customers including airline
s, hotel
s, tour operator
s, insurers
, car rental
and railway companies, ferry
and cruise line
s, travel agencies and individual travel
lers directly.
The parent company
of Amadeus IT Group, holding over 99.7% of the firm, is Amadeus IT Holding S.A., which is listed on the Spanish stock exchanges as of 29 April 2010 and trades under the symbol AMS. For the year ended 31 December 2009, the company reported revenues of €2.461 billion and EBITDA
of €894 million.
Amadeus has central sites in Madrid
(corporate headquarters and marketing), Sophia Antipolis
, France
(product development) and Erding
, Germany
(data processing centre
) as well as regional offices in Miami, Florida
, USA, Buenos Aires
, Bangkok
and Dubai
. At market level, Amadeus maintains customer operations through 73 local Amadeus Commercial Organisations (ACOs) covering 195 countries. The Amadeus group employs 10,170 employees worldwide.
, Iberia
, Lufthansa
and SAS
in 1987 in order to connect providers' content with travel agencies and consumers in real time. The creation of Amadeus was intended to offer a European alternative to Sabre
, the American GDS. The first Amadeus system was built from core reservation system code coming from System One, an American GDS that competed with Sabre
but went bankrupt, and a copy of the Air France
pricing engine. These systems were respectively running under IBM
TPF
and Unisys
. At the beginning of Amadeus, the Amadeus systems were functionally dedicated to airline reservation and centered on the PNR
(Passenger Name Record), the passenger's travel file. Throughout the years, the PNR was opened up to additional travel industries (hotels, rail, cars, cruises, ferries, insurance, etc).
Although established initially as a private partnership, Amadeus went public in October 1999, becoming listed on the Paris, Frankfurt and Madrid stock exchanges. Progressively and in line with industry evolution, Amadeus diversified its operations by focusing on information technologies (IT) to deliver services spanning beyond sales and reservation functionalities, centred on streamlining the operational and distribution requirements of its customer base.
In 2000, Amadeus received an ISO 9001:2000 quality certification – the first GDS company to do so. Since 2004, the company has invested €1 billion in R&D and Amadeus's technology has increasingly embraced open systems which provide clients with more flexibility and features, as well as other benefits. Today, 85% of its software portfolio is open system based. In 2005, Amadeus was delisted from the Paris, Frankfurt and Madrid stock exchanges when BC Partners
and Cinven
bought their stake from three of the four founding airlines and the rest of the capital floated from institutional and minority shareholders. The transition from distribution system to technology provider was reflected by the change in its corporate name in 2006, when the company name was changed to Amadeus IT Group. In 2009, Amadeus invested about €257 million in R&D. Amadeus is again listed on the Spanish Stock Exchanges as of 29 April 2010 (AMS). Throughout the years, Amadeus acquired:
Amadeus’ global operations comprise not only the main site in Erding, Germany, but also two strategic operation centres in Miami, United States and Sydney, Australia, and local competency centres in Germany, Thailand, Brazil, Argentina and the United Kingdom.
is the largest GDS provider serving the worldwide travel and tourism industry, with an estimated market share of 37% in 2009. This position permits Amadeus to offer distribution reach for global and local travel content. As of December 2010, over travel agencies worldwide use the Amadeus system and airline sales offices use it as their internal sales and reservations system. Amadeus gives access to bookable content from 435 airlines (including 60 low cost carriers), 29 car rental companies (representing car rental locations), 51 cruise lines and ferry operators, 280 hotel chains and hotels, 200 tour operators, 103 rail operators and 116 travel insurance companies.
Unlike the carriers’ legacy IT systems, which use different technologies, the Altéa platform is based on a common technical infrastructure and software. With Altéa, airlines outsource their IT operations onto a community platform which allows them to share information with both airline alliance
and code-share partners.
The Altéa suite presently consists of four main modules: Altéa Reservation, providing booking, pricing and ticketing management through a single interface; Altéa Inventory, providing schedule and seat capacity management on a flight-by-flight basis; Altéa Departure Control, a departure control system
software package; and Altéa e-commerce, a software suite
for airline e-commerce sales and support.
In 2009, the number of passengers boarded by airlines using Amadeus Altéa was 238 million. Amadeus is extending its IT solutions business with the ongoing development of similar systems for rail companies, hotel chains, airport operators and ground handling
companies.
. Income from these fees is used to finance the distribution network based on incentives and the Amadeus system evolutions.
In the late 90s, a business division specialized in e-commerce was created. Its purpose was to complement the Amadeus software product offer to the airlines by developing a complete web based booking solution. It proposes a high level of integration with Amadeus central reservation system.
In 2000, Amadeus was awarded the development of two new operational applications for British Airways
and Qantas Airways : the inventory management and the departure control systems. These products were outside of the core expertise domain of Amadeus and were built with the expertise of the airlines.
Travel
Travel is the movement of people or objects between relatively distant geographical locations. 'Travel' can also include relatively short stays between successive movements.-Etymology:...
and tourism
Tourism
Tourism is travel for recreational, leisure or business purposes. The World Tourism Organization defines tourists as people "traveling to and staying in places outside their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure, business and other purposes".Tourism has become a...
industry. The company is structured around two key related areas - its global distribution system and its IT Solutions business area. Acting as an international network, Amadeus provides search, pricing, booking, ticket
Ticket
Ticket may refer to:* Ticket , a card or slip of paper used to gain admission to a location or event* Ticket , a card or slip of paper that designates one's position in a queue or ownership of an item to be picked up...
ing and other processing services in real-time to travel providers and travel agencies through its distribution business area
Amadeus CRS
Amadeus is a computer reservations system owned by the Amadeus IT Group with headquarters in Madrid, Spain. The central database is located at Erding, Germany. The development center is located at Sophia Antipolis, France...
. Through its IT Solutions business area, it also offers travel companies software systems
Computer software
Computer software, or just software, is a collection of computer programs and related data that provide the instructions for telling a computer what to do and how to do it....
which automate processes such as reservations, inventory management
Inventory management software
Inventory management software is a computer-based system for tracking product levels, orders, sales and deliveries. It can also be used in the manufacturing industry to create a work order, bill of materials and other production-related documents. Companies use inventory management software to...
and departure control
Departure Control System
A Departure Control System automates processing an Airlines' Airport management operation. This includes managing the information required for Airport Check-in and printing Boarding card, cargo load control and aircraft checks....
.
The group, which processed 850 million billable travel transactions in 2010, services customers including airline
Airline
An airline provides air transport services for traveling passengers and freight. Airlines lease or own their aircraft with which to supply these services and may form partnerships or alliances with other airlines for mutual benefit...
s, hotel
Hotel
A hotel is an establishment that provides paid lodging on a short-term basis. The provision of basic accommodation, in times past, consisting only of a room with a bed, a cupboard, a small table and a washstand has largely been replaced by rooms with modern facilities, including en-suite bathrooms...
s, tour operator
Tour operator
A tour operator typically combines tour and travel components to create a holiday. The most common example of a tour operator's product would be a flight on a charter airline plus a transfer from the airport to a hotel and the services of a local representative, all for one price. Niche tour...
s, insurers
Insurance
In law and economics, insurance is a form of risk management primarily used to hedge against the risk of a contingent, uncertain loss. Insurance is defined as the equitable transfer of the risk of a loss, from one entity to another, in exchange for payment. An insurer is a company selling the...
, car rental
Car rental
A car rental or car hire agency is a company that rents automobiles for short periods of time for a fee...
and railway companies, ferry
Ferry
A ferry is a form of transportation, usually a boat, but sometimes a ship, used to carry primarily passengers, and sometimes vehicles and cargo as well, across a body of water. Most ferries operate on regular, frequent, return services...
and cruise line
Cruise line
A cruise line is a company that operates cruise ships. Cruise lines have a dual character; they are partly in the transportation business, and partly in the leisure entertainment business, a duality that carries down into the ships themselves, which have both a crew headed by the ship's captain,...
s, travel agencies and individual travel
Travel
Travel is the movement of people or objects between relatively distant geographical locations. 'Travel' can also include relatively short stays between successive movements.-Etymology:...
lers directly.
The parent company
Parent company
A parent company is a company that owns enough voting stock in another firm to control management and operations by influencing or electing its board of directors; the second company being deemed as a subsidiary of the parent company...
of Amadeus IT Group, holding over 99.7% of the firm, is Amadeus IT Holding S.A., which is listed on the Spanish stock exchanges as of 29 April 2010 and trades under the symbol AMS. For the year ended 31 December 2009, the company reported revenues of €2.461 billion and EBITDA
EBITDA
EBITDA is an acronym for earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization. It is a non-GAAP metric that is measured exactly as stated. All interest, tax, depreciation and amortization entries in the income statement are reversed out from the bottom-line net income...
of €894 million.
Amadeus has central sites in Madrid
Madrid
Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...
(corporate headquarters and marketing), Sophia Antipolis
Sophia Antipolis
Sophia Antipolis is a technology park northwest of Antibes and southwest of Nice, France. Much of the park falls within the commune of Valbonne. Created in 1970-84, it houses primarily companies in the fields of computing, electronics, pharmacology and biotechnology. Several institutions of higher...
, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
(product development) and Erding
Erding
Erding is a town in Bavaria, Germany, and capital of the district Erding. It had a population of 34,122 in 2004. It is twinned with Bastia in CorsicaThe original Erdinger Weissbier is a well-known Bavarian specialty...
, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
(data processing centre
Data center
A data center is a facility used to house computer systems and associated components, such as telecommunications and storage systems...
) as well as regional offices in Miami, Florida
Miami, Florida
Miami is a city located on the Atlantic coast in southeastern Florida and the county seat of Miami-Dade County, the most populous county in Florida and the eighth-most populous county in the United States with a population of 2,500,625...
, USA, Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...
, Bangkok
Bangkok
Bangkok is the capital and largest urban area city in Thailand. It is known in Thai as Krung Thep Maha Nakhon or simply Krung Thep , meaning "city of angels." The full name of Bangkok is Krung Thep Mahanakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahintharayutthaya Mahadilok Phop Noppharat Ratchathani Burirom...
and Dubai
Dubai
Dubai is a city and emirate in the United Arab Emirates . The emirate is located south of the Persian Gulf on the Arabian Peninsula and has the largest population with the second-largest land territory by area of all the emirates, after Abu Dhabi...
. At market level, Amadeus maintains customer operations through 73 local Amadeus Commercial Organisations (ACOs) covering 195 countries. The Amadeus group employs 10,170 employees worldwide.
History
Amadeus was originally created as a neutral global distribution system (GDS) by Air FranceAir France
Air France , stylised as AIRFRANCE, is the French flag carrier headquartered in Tremblay-en-France, , and is one of the world's largest airlines. It is a subsidiary of the Air France-KLM Group and a founding member of the SkyTeam global airline alliance...
, Iberia
Iberia
The name Iberia refers to three historical regions of the old world:* Iberian Peninsula, in Southwest Europe, location of modern-day Portugal and Spain** Prehistoric Iberia...
, Lufthansa
Lufthansa
Deutsche Lufthansa AG is the flag carrier of Germany and the largest airline in Europe in terms of overall passengers carried. The name of the company is derived from Luft , and Hansa .The airline is the world's fourth-largest airline in terms of overall passengers carried, operating...
and SAS
SAS Group
Scandinavian Airlines System Aktiebolag , trading as SAS Group and SAS AB, is a holding company based in Solna, Sweden. It is the parent company of the airlines Scandinavian Airlines, Blue1 and Widerøe, and the aviation services companies SAS Business Opportunities, SAS Cargo Group, SAS Ground...
in 1987 in order to connect providers' content with travel agencies and consumers in real time. The creation of Amadeus was intended to offer a European alternative to Sabre
Sabre (computer system)
Sabre Global Distribution System , owned by Sabre Holdings, is used by more than 55,000 travel agencies around the world with more than 400 airlines, 88,000 hotels, 24 car rental brands, and 13 cruise lines...
, the American GDS. The first Amadeus system was built from core reservation system code coming from System One, an American GDS that competed with Sabre
Sabre (computer system)
Sabre Global Distribution System , owned by Sabre Holdings, is used by more than 55,000 travel agencies around the world with more than 400 airlines, 88,000 hotels, 24 car rental brands, and 13 cruise lines...
but went bankrupt, and a copy of the Air France
Air France
Air France , stylised as AIRFRANCE, is the French flag carrier headquartered in Tremblay-en-France, , and is one of the world's largest airlines. It is a subsidiary of the Air France-KLM Group and a founding member of the SkyTeam global airline alliance...
pricing engine. These systems were respectively running under IBM
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
TPF
Transaction Processing Facility
TPF is an IBM real-time operating system for mainframes descended from the IBM System/360 family, including zSeries and System z9. The name is an initialism for Transaction Processing Facility....
and Unisys
Unisys
Unisys Corporation , headquartered in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania, United States, and incorporated in Delaware, is a long established business whose core products now involves computing and networking.-History:...
. At the beginning of Amadeus, the Amadeus systems were functionally dedicated to airline reservation and centered on the PNR
Passenger Name Record
In the travel industry, a passenger name record is a record in the database of a computer reservation system that contains the itinerary for a passenger, or a group of passengers traveling together...
(Passenger Name Record), the passenger's travel file. Throughout the years, the PNR was opened up to additional travel industries (hotels, rail, cars, cruises, ferries, insurance, etc).
Although established initially as a private partnership, Amadeus went public in October 1999, becoming listed on the Paris, Frankfurt and Madrid stock exchanges. Progressively and in line with industry evolution, Amadeus diversified its operations by focusing on information technologies (IT) to deliver services spanning beyond sales and reservation functionalities, centred on streamlining the operational and distribution requirements of its customer base.
In 2000, Amadeus received an ISO 9001:2000 quality certification – the first GDS company to do so. Since 2004, the company has invested €1 billion in R&D and Amadeus's technology has increasingly embraced open systems which provide clients with more flexibility and features, as well as other benefits. Today, 85% of its software portfolio is open system based. In 2005, Amadeus was delisted from the Paris, Frankfurt and Madrid stock exchanges when BC Partners
BC Partners
BC Partners is a private equity firm specialising in buyouts and acquisitions financing in Europe and the United States. The firm invests across all industries...
and Cinven
Cinven
Cinven is a British private equity firm founded in 1977 with offices in London, Paris, Frankfurt, Milan and Hong Kong. Currently, the company has raised four funds, with the last one signing up €6.5 billion...
bought their stake from three of the four founding airlines and the rest of the capital floated from institutional and minority shareholders. The transition from distribution system to technology provider was reflected by the change in its corporate name in 2006, when the company name was changed to Amadeus IT Group. In 2009, Amadeus invested about €257 million in R&D. Amadeus is again listed on the Spanish Stock Exchanges as of 29 April 2010 (AMS). Throughout the years, Amadeus acquired:
- SMART AB, the leading travel distribution company in Northern Europe
- Vacation.com, the largest US marketing network for leisure travel
- E-Travel, Inc., a leading supplier of hosted technology products for corporate travel
- OpodoOpodoOpodo is an Internet travel agency website. It is a pan-European enterprise, founded by a consortium of European airlines, including British Airways, Air France, Alitalia, Iberia, KLM, Lufthansa, Aer Lingus, Austrian Airlines and Finnair. The travel technology provider Amadeus now owns 99.4% of...
, a European travel website which it sold on February 2011 for €450 million - Airline Automation (AAI), a robotic PNR processing company, in 2006
- TravelTainment, a leisure content provider
- Optims, a European hotel software company
- Onerail, a rail IT software supplier
Data centre
Amadeus has its own data centre in Erding, Germany - the largest civil data centre in Europe. In 2010, the Erding complex processed 850 million key billed transactions, and handled, on average, user data queries per second, with an average system response time of 0.3 seconds and an average system uptime of 99.99%.Amadeus’ global operations comprise not only the main site in Erding, Germany, but also two strategic operation centres in Miami, United States and Sydney, Australia, and local competency centres in Germany, Thailand, Brazil, Argentina and the United Kingdom.
Distribution
Amadeus CRSAmadeus CRS
Amadeus is a computer reservations system owned by the Amadeus IT Group with headquarters in Madrid, Spain. The central database is located at Erding, Germany. The development center is located at Sophia Antipolis, France...
is the largest GDS provider serving the worldwide travel and tourism industry, with an estimated market share of 37% in 2009. This position permits Amadeus to offer distribution reach for global and local travel content. As of December 2010, over travel agencies worldwide use the Amadeus system and airline sales offices use it as their internal sales and reservations system. Amadeus gives access to bookable content from 435 airlines (including 60 low cost carriers), 29 car rental companies (representing car rental locations), 51 cruise lines and ferry operators, 280 hotel chains and hotels, 200 tour operators, 103 rail operators and 116 travel insurance companies.
IT Solutions
The principal service of this business area is the Amadeus Altéa Customer Management System (CMS), a software suite which addresses airlines' key operating functions: sales and reservations, inventory management and departure control.Unlike the carriers’ legacy IT systems, which use different technologies, the Altéa platform is based on a common technical infrastructure and software. With Altéa, airlines outsource their IT operations onto a community platform which allows them to share information with both airline alliance
Airline alliance
An airline alliance is an agreement between two or more airlines to cooperate on a substantial level. The three largest passenger alliances are the Star Alliance, SkyTeam and Oneworld. Alliances also form between cargo airlines, such as that of WOW Alliance, SkyTeam Cargo and ANA/UPS Alliance...
and code-share partners.
The Altéa suite presently consists of four main modules: Altéa Reservation, providing booking, pricing and ticketing management through a single interface; Altéa Inventory, providing schedule and seat capacity management on a flight-by-flight basis; Altéa Departure Control, a departure control system
Departure Control System
A Departure Control System automates processing an Airlines' Airport management operation. This includes managing the information required for Airport Check-in and printing Boarding card, cargo load control and aircraft checks....
software package; and Altéa e-commerce, a software suite
Software suite
A software suite or application suite is a collection of computer programs, usually application software and programming software of related functionality, often sharing a more-or-less common user interface and some ability to smoothly exchange data with each other.Sometimes software makers...
for airline e-commerce sales and support.
In 2009, the number of passengers boarded by airlines using Amadeus Altéa was 238 million. Amadeus is extending its IT solutions business with the ongoing development of similar systems for rail companies, hotel chains, airport operators and ground handling
Aircraft ground handling
In aviation, aircraft ground handling defines the servicing of an aircraft while it is on the ground and parked at a terminal gate of an airport.-Overview:...
companies.
Business model and other business lines
The business model of Amadeus is booking fee or transaction based, which means that a fee is taken for each confirmed net booking made in the Amadeus CRSAmadeus CRS
Amadeus is a computer reservations system owned by the Amadeus IT Group with headquarters in Madrid, Spain. The central database is located at Erding, Germany. The development center is located at Sophia Antipolis, France...
. Income from these fees is used to finance the distribution network based on incentives and the Amadeus system evolutions.
In the late 90s, a business division specialized in e-commerce was created. Its purpose was to complement the Amadeus software product offer to the airlines by developing a complete web based booking solution. It proposes a high level of integration with Amadeus central reservation system.
In 2000, Amadeus was awarded the development of two new operational applications for British Airways
British Airways
British Airways is the flag carrier airline of the United Kingdom, based in Waterside, near its main hub at London Heathrow Airport. British Airways is the largest airline in the UK based on fleet size, international flights and international destinations...
and Qantas Airways : the inventory management and the departure control systems. These products were outside of the core expertise domain of Amadeus and were built with the expertise of the airlines.