Amadeus has revealed that its online booking technology handled over Euro 9 billion worth of bookings for its airline dot-com customers in 2008, around one-third up on 2007’s figure. The Madrid-based business’ annual results, released this week, highlighted a number of different revenue streams as Amadeus continues to expand beyond its traditional role as a…
Amadeus online bookings soar despite 10% decline in air sector
Amadeus has revealed that its online booking technology handled over Euro 9 billion worth of bookings for its airline dot-com customers in 2008, around one-third up on 2007’s figure.
The Madrid-based business’ annual results, released this week, highlighted a number of different revenue streams as Amadeus continues to expand beyond its traditional role as a GDS.
As well as providing the booking engine, Amadeus also hosts a number of airline dot-com web sites.
Its kit supports more than 6 million unique visitors every day.
During 2008, it delivered over 2.85 billion page views with 99.9% reliability.
In order to highlight the strength of its airline IT business, it has introduced a new metric – passengers boarded.
This will cover airlines which use two or more products from its Altea Customer Management Solutions.
In 2007, passengers boarded was 123.8 million. This year a 55% lift saw the number reach 193m.
Elsewhere, it also reported a strong performance from Amadeus Cruise, a product which can be used by OTAs and well as high street and specialist agents. Bookings through this tool increased by nearly 20% in 2008 compared with the previous year.
Despite the diversification of revenue streams, its core GDS role continues to gain market share in a declining market.
It is the world leader in travel agency air bookings with a 35.6% market share, 1.7% ahead of 2007. Hotel bookings through the Amadeus GDS were 4.4% up, delivering more than Euro 2.2 billion for hotels using the system.
However, figures for the start of 2009 reveal the extent of the overall slowdown in global air travel.
Its Q1 09 GDS air bookings are 9% down on Q1 08, with Amadeus estimating that the market is 13% down.
Overall, Amadeus’ revenue from all its products in 2008 grew by 2.2% compared with 2007, to Euro 2.8 billion, although the actual number of bookings by 2.1% to 526.6 millon.
Elsewhere, Amadeus has also won a long-running court battle with IATA. Amadeus had complained that IATAs PaxIS product, which IATA sells as a strategic analysis tool to airlines, contained information sourced from Amadeus which IATA had no right to sell on.
IATA will stop using the disputed data within PaxIS with immediate effect. However, the pair will continue to work together in a number of other areas.
