Amadeus has revealed its business results for the six months ending 30 June 2007.
Total bookings grew by 6.7% to 281.5m. Online air bookings grew by 20.4% and now represent 17.4% of total air bookings. Amadeus had 32.9% of the market in travel agency air bookings in the first half of 2007, up 2.4 percentage points year-on-year. Total revenue grew by 11.0% to EUR 1,534.1 million.

José Antonio Tazón, President and CEO, Amadeus, comments: “We have calculated that our travel agency partners booked EUR 31.7 billion-worth of air tickets on Amadeus in the first half of 2007 clearly demonstrating the continuing value of the travel agency channel for our airline partners. Airlines also generated EUR 3.6 billion euros through their own websites using Amadeus technology.

During 2007 we have continued to expand our IT solution business with a ten-year agreement with Cathay Pacific, the first Asian airline to sign for the full Amadeus Altéa suite of customer management solutions.

The distribution and technology solutions we offer to all our travel industry partners are based on the most advanced technology platform in the industry. By 2010, we will have completely decommissioned our legacy transaction protocol framework technology and will be running 100% on next generation open systems. This gives us confidence that we will continue to deliver high value technology solutions to the industry for many years to come.”

Amadeus signed low-fare content agreements with over 150 airlines in 2007. Amadeus has a specific programme for the European market, Amadeus Full Content Option, under which 71 airlines guarantee access to their complete public inventory of flights and fares with no GDS surcharge on these bookings. Travel agents can now also access the content of 52 low-cost carriers in Amadeus.

Amadeus e-ticket community is the largest in the industry with 209 airlines using e-ticket distribution in 143 markets, where 78% of tickets issued by Amadeus in the first six months of the year were e-tickets. Furthermore, Amadeus has agreements with 71 airlines to host and operate their complete e-ticketing technology and has built links to 125 airlines using other electronic ticketing systems. A total of 394 interline electronic ticketing agreements have been implemented for this community of airlines. These figures are far ahead of those announced by any of Amadeus’ competitors.

Further, in its drive to eliminate the last barriers to industry-wide e-ticketing, Amadeus has also launched Electronic Ticketing Direct solution which brings e-ticketing to non-Billing and Settlement Plan markets.

Hoteliers around the world continue to respond to the value Amadeus channels add. Amadeus has added over 5,000 properties since October 2006, taking the total to 75,000 globally. 2,000 new additions were independent and boutique properties not usually available on electronic distribution systems. Over 130 brands are now members of Amadeus’ Best Available Rate programme, while its commission tracking initiative has received strong industry support. Over 20 major hotel chains have already signed up to the Amadeus Worldwide Commission Manager.
——-