Amadeus gazes into hospitality crystal ball
With hotel bookings through Amadeus increasing by 7.5% last year and 77,000 hotels on the system, it’s little wonder the technology company is keen to gaze into the hospitality industry’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. What’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: “It 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.â€
He added: “The 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.â€
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. “Staff 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.â€
He also predicts hotel groups will begin to diversify and offer non-hotel services to clients such as flights, car hire and rail tickets. “I am seeing this happen already and why not? It’s a logical step,†he said.
Rooms, too, will dramatically alter. “Future travellers are a different client altogether from we who travel today,†said Medawar. “They 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. That’s the way to retain guests and get them to come back.â€
Amadeus will release more details on its new hotel technology later in the year.
by Dinah Hatch
Phil Davies
Vegas’s Billion-Dollar Secrets – What They Don’t Want Tourists to Know
Visit Florida’s New CEO Bryan Griffin Shares His Vision for State Tourism with Graham
Chicago’s Tourism Renaissance: Graham Interviews Kristin Reynolds of Choose Chicago
Graham Talks with Cassandra McCauley of MMGY NextFactor About the Latest Industry Research
Destination International’s Andreas Weissenborn: Research, Advocacy, and Destination Impact
Graham and Don Welsh Discuss the Success of Destinations International’s Annual Conference
Graham and CEO Andre Kiwitz on Ventura Travel’s UK Move and Recruitment for the Role
Brett Laiken and Graham Discuss Florida’s Tourism Momentum and Global Appeal
Graham and Elliot Ferguson on Positioning DC as a Cultural and Inclusive Global Destination
Graham Talks to Fraser Last About His England-to-Ireland Trek for Mental Health Awareness
Kathy Nelson Tells Graham About the Honour of Hosting the World Cup and Kansas City’s Future
Graham McKenzie on Sir Richie Richardson’s Dual Passion for Golf and His Homeland, Antigua
ADS PRO 
United Airlines to be the sole US airline to fly to Bangkok and Ho Chi Minh City from October
Iberia adds new US, Latin America routes
Airbnb eyes a loyalty program but details remain under wraps
RX launches WTM Spotlight with an inaugural event in Saudi Arabia
What’s new on Route 66 in Arizona