Amadeus IT Holding SA : Amadeus unveils landmark HRS agreement

Amadeus and HRS, the worldwide leading hotel portal for corporate customers, today announced a strategic alliance to distribute HRS's hotel content through Amadeus. This is a milestone in HRS' strategy as it is the first time the hotel portal will make its content available through a global distribution system. Business Release 17 Jan 2012 Amadeus unveils landmark HRS agreement • Amadeus is first to distribute HRS's hotel content through the GDS channel, taking a major industry-level step towards efficient hotel content distribution • By Q2 2012, Amadeus' subscribers worldwide will benefit from integrated access to broader content with the addition of HRS' 250,000 hotel properties, including more than 50,000 hotel properties which were distributed exclusively through HRS up to now. Madrid, Spain, 17 January 2012: Amadeus, a leading travel technology partner and transaction processor for the global travel and tourism industry, and HRS, the worldwide leading hotel portal for corporate customers, today announced a strategic alliance to distribute HRS's hotel content through Amadeus. This is a milestone in HRS' strategy as it is the first time the hotel portal will make its content available through a global distribution system. Through this strategic partnership, which is a major step forward in Amadeus' 'Multisource' hotel initiative to distribute hotel content from diverse sources, Amadeus will seamlessly integrate HRS' database of around 250,000 hotel properties to its distribution system. This includes more than 50,000 independent hotel properties which were distributed exclusively through HRS up to now. HRS, recognised as the worldwide leading hotel portal for corporate customers, offers business travellers a vast choice of hotels worldwide, with detailed and high quality shopping information in 32 languages, best price guarantee for all properties as well as flexible and customer-friendly booking conditions. By seamlessly integrating this standardised hotel content to Amadeus' newly re-engineered hotel search and reservation system, Amadeus and HRS are responding to customers' demands for efficient, integrated access to the most relevant hotel content. The integration of HRS hotel offers to Amadeus will eliminate labour-intensive, hotel shopping and servicing by bookers, who typically compare rates for the same hotel across multiple channels before booking. It also brings a vast new array of highly-demanded independent hotels to the GDS environment for the first time. Tobias Ragge, Chief Executive Officer, HRS, commented "This strategic agreement with Amadeus is a key milestone in our multichannel strategy to offer our hotel partners extended, integrated distribution reach from a single source. By distributing our content through the GDS channel for the first time, we will make our hotel partners bookable through more than 91,000 travel agencies and over 65,000 airline sales offices, which use the Amadeus system worldwide. HRS's integrated end-to-end solution, which connects independent properties directly with the GDS, helps to reduce our hotel partners' distribution cost by 10 per cent compared to competing solutions. At the same time we respond to the demand from bookers worldwide to find our vast choice of independent hotels efficiently through Amadeus distribution solutions. Our corporate customers will benefit from higher adoption rates when it comes to hotel bookings, as their travel agency partners now have also access to more extensive hotel content." Amadeus has already started the integration of HRS's content into its distribution system to make it as easy and efficient to book as any GDS content. By Q2 2012, corporations and travel agencies will have access to this content via both Amadeus e-Travel Management - the online self-booking tool used by 5,200 corporations worldwide - and Amadeus Selling Platform - the point of sale solution used by Amadeus travel agents for traditional servicing. This will allow them to shop for hotels from different sources - GDS and HRS, quickly and easy from a single screen and with the highest level of mid- and back office integration. "HRS is the ideal partner to complement Amadeus' current hotel proposition to bookers. Offering integrated access to HRS' vast inventory of unique 'non-GDS' hotel offers via bookers' preferred channels marks a milestone in our 'Multisource' strategy to bring new levels of efficiency to the fragmented hotel distribution space." commented Francisco Pérez-Lozao, Vice President New Businesses, Amadeus. "This partnership with HRS reflects our shared absolute focus on the needs of our customers and we are thrilled with this boundary-breaking alliance." Yves Galimidi, Global Travel Purchaser, Indirect Material and Services (IMS), IKEA, commented "For Ikea, the Amadeus and HRS partnership is nothing but good news. It means we can find the best rooms for our travellers at the best price, without labour-intensive hotel shopping. The extensive additional choice of hotel properties mean all of Ikea's unique, quickly-changing needs will be met. We are very pleased." - Ends - Notes to the editors About HRS HRS - Hotel Reservation Service - operates a global electronic hotel reservation system for business and private travellers based on a database of more than 250,000 hotels in all price categories in Germany, Europe and the rest of the world. This system enables users to make direct bookings free of charge, with immediate confirmation and at continually-updated special HRS prices. The room prices quoted for selected hotels are guaranteed for the booking in question. To find out more about HRS, please go to www.HRS.com. About Amadeus Amadeus is a leading transaction processor and provider of advanced technology solutions for the global travel and tourism industry. Customer groups include travel providers (e.g airlines, hotels, rail, ferries, etc.), travel sellers (travel agencies and websites), and travel buyers (corporations and individual travellers). The group operates a transaction-based business model and processed 850 million billable travel transactions in 2010. Amadeus has central sites in Madrid (corporate headquarters), Nice (development) and Erding (Operations - data processing centre) and regional offices in Miami, Buenos Aires, Bangkok and Dubai. At a market level, Amadeus maintains customer operations through 73 local Amadeus Commercial Organisations covering 195 countries. Amadeus is listed on the Madrid, Barcelona, Bilbao and Valencia stock exchanges and trades under the symbol "AMS.MC". For the year ended 31 December 2010, the company reported revenues of EUR 2,683 million and EBITDA of EUR 1,015 million. The Amadeus group employs around 10,000 employees worldwide, with 123 nationalities represented at the central offices. . To visit the Amadeus Investor Relations centre please go to . Contact details Amadeus Corporate Communication tel: [phone] fax : [phone] e-mail : [e-mail] HRS Anja Klein, Head of Communications Phone: [phone] Fax: [phone] e-mail: [e-mail]   Download    1 document, 50 Kbytes