Hospitality ‘We make it simple for agencies’


A


madeus has developed a major hospitality distribution and technology business in recent years.


Wolfram Schmidt, Amadeus director of


hotel sales within the business travel agency division of Travel Channels, notes: “Hotel distribution is incredibly fragmented and not as centralised as air distribution. “[Most] air bookings are done through


global distribution systems [GDSs]. That is not the case for hotels. We and competitor GDSs have a good footprint for hotels, but travel management companies (TMCS) also take inventory from other partners, from hotel specialists and aggregators. “The result is they don’t have a


streamlined display and have to switch around [between channels], which is costly and a corporate client might come back and say ‘I found a cheaper rate’. This is exactly what happened with the low-cost carriers 15 years ago.” Schmidt says: “Since 2013, we increased


our content from 100,000 hotel properties to close to six million from many different types of sources. That gives agencies a better choice. For example, we have hotels in the Australian outback and in northern Sweden where there are very few. Our latest integration is with Booking. com which has added one million properties.


“We contract with big hotel chains – that


is about 120,000 hotels which is ‘classic’ content through our Travel Platform. Then we have contracts with aggregators and wholesale partners like Expedia and Booking. com. “We have 400,000 Amadeus Value Hotels


where we contract with the hotels and provide net rates. We price inventory with the hotels and give net rates to agencies. “We have 900,000 unique hotel


Amadeus has developed into a leading hospitality IT provider, argues Wolfram Schmidt, director of hotel sales within the business travel agency division of Amadeus Travel Channels


FIGURE 42: ACCOMMODATION TURNOVER, 2017


Turnover (€ billion)


€bn


10 15 20 25 30 35


0 5


€31.3bn €28.8bn €25.5bn €23.6bn€24.8bn %


10 20 30 40 50


0 26 | Travel Weekly Europe Report 2019 46% 32% 28% 24% 13% 17% 16% 9% 28% 26%


France Germany Italy Spain UK


Employees 50-249 250+


Source: Eurostat


Share of turnover by size of enterprise


properties, and six million in total, from multiple sources. It allows customers to compare prices – for the same suite, same hotel, same date – and that creates confidence. “We are basically a big metasearch


platform in a B2B environment.” He adds: “We are growing in all sectors.


In the business travel area, our strongest growth over the last 12 months has been in the UK, primarily due to strong uptake in our aggregator content but also due to the extent of mergers and acquisitions in the market.”


Attachment rate Amadeus may have an enormous amount of hotel inventory, but Schmidt insists: “You don’t want to throw everything at your client. If there is too much choice it is overwhelming. You show a hotel only once.” What he calls “the attachment rate” of


Amadeus hotel bookings to air is growing constantly. Schmidt says: “In the UK we have a strong


attachment rate of up to 1.5 – that is two hotel bookings for every three air trips.” He notes: “In general, business travel agents have high attachment rates.” He says: “We see growth in hotel


reservations over air reservations. We see it in the overall footprint of the market and we hear it anecdotally from clients. “One particular strength we have is


‘active’ segments for any hotel reservation, independent of the sourcing – direct from the hotel or through a hotel aggregator or wholesaler. “We create a PNR [passenger name record] for a booking. If an agent needs


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