Amadeus has announced a reorganisation to take advantage of opportunities in hospitality and leisure. Amadeus’ two hospitality business lines - distribution and technology services - have been brought together into a single unit under the leadership of Antoine Medawar, who becomes Managing Director, Hospitality. This business unit now stands alone from Travel Services and Leisure, which previously took care of hotel distribution. Albert Pozo, Managing Director, Travel Services and Leisure, who did much of the preparation for the hospitality integration, now takes greater charge of Amadeus’ operations in the leisure sphere. As well as looking after Amadeus’ cruise, car rental, tours, rail, ferry and insurance businesses, Albert will take over control of Vacation.com, North America’s largest holiday-sales network with over 9,000 travel agencies and a fully-owned Amadeus subsidiary since October 2000.

Mr Medawar is tasked with boosting the growth of Amadeus’ hospitality distribution and IT businesses. He will build on the synergies between Amadeus, its network of 75 local distribution companies, Optims - of which he remains CEO -, and Opodo to deliver the best solutions to hoteliers. Mr Medawar brings his entrepreneurial spirit to the transformation of Amadeus’ solutions and business model to address the changes in the hospitality market. The Hospitality Business Unit now represents 320 staff in Europe, Asia and the US.  “We are building on the strengths of Amadeus and Optims to provide a complete suite of products and services for the distribution and management of hotel rooms, covering all processes from booking to check-out,”  says Mr Medawar.

Key to the success of the hospitality unit is the delivery of the Amadeus Hotel Distribution Platform, which will serve hotel reservations from all direct and indirect distribution channels through a single and centralised inventory of hotel rooms and rates. Amadeus will offer hotel companies a new generation, integrated, Central Reservation System, Customer Retention Management and Revenue/Yield Management systems to improve their operational efficiency and service.

Mr Pozo will focus on the equally important leisure sector. In tour distribution in particular, where Amadeus leads the market, distributing the tour packages of around 185 operators, there is a huge potential revenue to tap into. The company is equally committed to the continuing development of distribution and IT services for rail, car rental, cruise, insurance, ferries and destination services. By bringing Vacation.com into the Travel Services and Leisure business unit, Amadeus will be able to exploit synergies between the US company and the rest of the company’s broad leisure portfolio, as well as supporting Vacation.com management in the aggressive development of its business model.

“Now is the time to exploit the huge opportunity in providing distribution and technology services to the leisure travel industry; the integration of our operations around the globe is absolutely crucial to this effort,” says Mr Pozo.

By focusing better on these important non-air areas and placing two senior executives in the segment, Amadeus takes a step closer to its goal of becoming the leading provider of IT solutions to the travel and tourism industry.
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