Amadeus
is pleased to announce
the signature of Travelbag as a new Amadeus user. Travelbag, one of the
leading long-haul UK travel agencies, was acquired by ebookers in February
2003.With this agreement ebookers confirms Amadeus as its primary GDS in the
travel distribution business in the UK, France, Spain, Benelux, Germany,
Scandinavia, Finland, Austria and Ireland. The agreement also confirms
Amadeus as the leading GDS technology provider for UK online travel
agencies.
“Amadeus is a key part of our GDS strategy and has shown its ability to
support our demanding transaction volumes,” comments Dinesh Dhamija,
Chairman and Founder of ebookers plc. “Amadeus products are, without a
doubt, market leading and their strategy going forward in this changing
environment is well aligned with our own. The relationship between Amadeus
and the leading European airlines ensures us access to the lowest fares and
highest reliability; in addition Amadeus has developed market leading faring
products, so helping us to meet our customers’ requirements.”

Gillian Gibson, Director Multinational Customer Group at Amadeus, explains
that, “This decision by ebookers puts Amadeus in a strong position to
achieve its aim of being the second largest GDS in the UK market by the end
of 2004. We have been ebookers’ partners for over five years and have shown
them the productivity improvements that Amadeus brings to online and offline
businesses. Amadeus will continue to invest in both online and offline
service and solutions to meet our customers needs.”

The Western European online travel market is expected to leap from EUR 2.6
billion in 2000 to EUR 20.2 billion by 2006, which is about 8.5 per cent of
the total market (Marcussen, Centre for Regional and Tourism Research,
Denmark, April 2004). Additionally, total online bookings, through Amadeus
API, grew by 30 per cent during the first quarter 2004 over the same period
in 2003.
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