Business Release
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: +34 91 582 0160
fax : +34 91 582 0188
e-mail :
mediarelations@amadeus.com
HRS
Anja Klein, Head of Communications
Phone: +49 221 2077-5058
Fax: +49 221 2077-4480
e-mail:
Anja.Klein@hrs.de