Amadeus has signed its first pan-regional agreement with Asian online travel agency,  Hutchison Priceline. Amadeus will provide Hutchison Priceline with access to its comprehensive air, hotel and Hotel Multimedia content. Amadeus will support Hutchison Priceline in its current Asian markets: Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan, and its expansion plans.

Hutchison Priceline plans to use the Amadeus Master Pricer suite to access flight content. Amadeus Master Pricer Standard will allow Hutchison Priceline’s customers to view up to 200 low-cost, availability-checked fares for a given date in a single transaction. Amadeus Master Pricer Calendar will allow Hutchison Priceline’s customers to easily view a range of low-priced, availability-checked domestic and international flight and price options from multiple airlines in a calendar format. Hutchison Priceline will also have access to Amadeus’ international hotel content with over 68,000 locations as well as Hotel Multimedia.

The Master Pricer low-fare search and Calendar tools, and Amadeus Availability Server, which uses advanced algorithms and intelligent technology to optimise availability data, are currently the world’s leading international low-fare search technology applications, used by many international online travel agencies around the world. By enhancing the shopping experience these solutions will help Hutchison Priceline convert shoppers into buyers, thus significantly improving the conversion rate and increasing sales.

Hutchison Priceline is operated by Hutchison-Priceline (Travel) Ltd, which is owned by US-based Priceline.com Inc, and the Hong Kong-based multinational conglomerate, Hutchison Whampoa Ltd. “We were very pleased by the technology offered by Amadeus,” says Tony Ma, Chief Executive Officer, Hutchison-Priceline, “and we are confident that this technology will allow us to offer our customers a better shopping experience and faster access to the best fares and rates, as we continue to build and expand our business across the Asian region.”

PhocusWright expects the Asian online travel market place to grow by 30% a year to USD25.6 billion by 2007. “Amadeus is committed to providing the best technology for online travel agents and consumers and our strategy in the online travel agency sector is to develop our success in the European market, where we have over 60% of the market, to the fast-growing Asian markets,” says Gillian Gibson, Vice President, Multinational Customer Group, Amadeus, “Clearly this partnership with one of the best names in online travel takes that commitment forward significantly.”
——-