12 March 2008

Amadeus gazes into hospitality crystal ball

With hotel bookings through Amadeus increasing by 7.5% last year and 77,000 hotels on the system, itââ¬â¢s little wonder the technology company is keen to gaze into the hospitality industryââ¬â¢s crystal ball.

That future gazing resulted in the release yesterday of a dense report predicting further globalisation as the residents of emerging markets start to play a bigger part in hotel bookings across the world.

It also foresaw an increasingly demanding customer base which refuses to believe marketing hype and goes social networking for the truth about brands and individual hotels. Whatââ¬â¢s more, the report predicted a huge surge in technology advancement, allowing hotels to be more efficient in all back office systems.

But why did Amadeus choose now to conduct the research?

Amadeus Hospitality Business Group managing director Antoine Medawar explains: ââ¬ÅâœIt was important to test what we thought we knew about the industry over the last few years because we are in the middle of building a new concept, a system that will embrace future technology needs. It will allow hotels to centralise distribution across all channels, be it website, online travel agencies, call centres or GDSs and it will centralise reservation information as well as content management.ââ¬~

He added: ââ¬ÅâœThe new technology will support 25,000 transactions per second and will see the merging of distribution with an IT system that will handle CRM, loyalty and property management systems.ââ¬~

The new technology is being developed over the next two years and will be delivered piecemeal to customers.

Medawar also predicted that the role of the call centre will change. ââ¬ÅâœStaff will be required not only to take bookings but to upsell to customers. Amadeus is working on technology that will help call centres to do this because we believe this is what the future holds.ââ¬~

He also predicts hotel groups will begin to diversify and offer non-hotel services to clients such as flights, car hire and rail tickets. ââ¬ÅâœI am seeing this happen already and why not? Itââ¬â¢s a logical step,ââ¬~ he said.

Rooms, too, will dramatically alter. ââ¬ÅâœFuture travellers are a different client altogether from we who travel today,ââ¬~ said Medawar. ââ¬ÅâœThey want the very latest technology in their rooms, from iPod docking stations upwards, and they have different values about what makes a good hotel. They are from all parts of the world too, not just the West. So hotels have to be able to have the technology to gather data about what they eat, how they use hotel rooms and what they are looking for. Thatââ¬â¢s the way to retain guests and get them to come back.ââ¬~

Amadeus will release more details on its new hotel technology later in the year.

by Dinah Hatch

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