Amadeus announces landmark agreement with HRS

Amadeus is to become the first GDS to distribute 250,000 hotels available on the Hotel Reservation Service (HRS) portal to the trade.

Amadeus is to become the first GDS to distribute 250,000 hotels available on the Hotel Reservation Service (HRS) portal to the trade.

The worldwide hotel portal for corporate customers has formed a strategic alliance to distribute HRS’s hotel content through Amadeus, including 50,000 properties previously only distributed via the portal.

The deal is described as a “milestone” in HRS’s strategy as it is the first time the hotel portal will make its content available through a GDS.

Amadeus will seamlessly integrate HRS’s database into its distribution system in what is seen as a major step forward in the company’s ‘Multisource’ hotel initiative to distribute hotel content from diverse sources.

The agreement, due to be operational by the second quarter of the year, brings a vast number of independent hotels to the GDS environment for the first time.

Corporations and travel agencies will have access to the content via the Amadeus e-Travel Management online self-booking tool and the Amadeus Selling Platform used by agents.

HRS CEO Tobias Ragge said: “This strategic agreement with Amadeus is a key milestone in our multi-channel 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% compared to competing solutions.

“At the same time we’re responding 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 also have access to more extensive hotel content.”

Amadeus new business vice president Francisco Pérez-Lozao added: “Offering integrated access to HRS’s 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.

“This partnership with HRS reflects our shared absolute focus on the needs of our customers and we are thrilled with this boundary-breaking alliance.”