TECHNOLOGY FEATURE: Amadeus' "holistic" approach

Amadeus has unveiled a new suite of mobile products aimed at managing the mobile traveller. Albert Pozo, Amadeus' vp for business and corporate travel, tells ABTN how the company's increasing focus on mobile technology is providing seamless management.

Amadeus has enhanced its e-Travel Management and self booking tool (SBT) with a suite of mobile products that provides business travellers with improved access to their itineraries both on- and off-line, better communication via SMS text message and ‘intelligent' location-specific information, again by SMS.

But the move by Amadeus signals an increasing awareness of the importance of mobile solutions, or mobility, in the overall process of buying and selling of travel. As Albert Pozo, Amadeus' vice president, business and corporate travel, explained, the true value of mobility is in creating a completely seamless customer experience.

Albert Pozo

He said: "The mobile area is really one of the areas we have decided it is strategic to invest in, particularly in the context of the corporate managed travel environment, and the rationale is relatively simple.

"If you think about it, for many years we have put a lot of effort into technology that has delivered solutions in managing travel before it occurs. The part where we haven't been as successful, where mobility really is the answer, is in managing the travel when the traveller leaves the office and before they come back."

Mr Pozo argued that mobility provides the answer to ensuring corporate travel compliance at a time when the business traveller is most vulnerable and when companies find it hardest to manage policies, especially during times of crisis.

Amadeus Mobile Partner (AMP), SMS Traveller Contact and Mobile Travel Assistant with ConTgo, are innovations in themselves partly born of crisis management. But more importantly they have been designed to integrate seamlessly into the rest of Amadeus' popular e-Travel Management product, bridging the divide between booking, travelling and expense management.

"This is an important gap that I think we are the first in the industry to cover in a seamless way, because we've providing mobile solutions that effectively are integrated with the rest," said Mr Pozo.

"For us it was very important not to have travel and travel management disconnected. Managing the mobile traveller while they are out there, and doing it an integrated way, is the approach that Amadeus is taking."

Amadeus and most within the travel technology sector have experienced difficult times as a result of knock on effects of the current economic troubles. Despite this, Amadeus has continued to invest heavily in research and development (R&D), increasingly with a focus on mobile technology.

"That has been our strategy even at the times where we have been going through, in the last month, year or so, quite challenging times for all of us in the industry. But I think we've managed to maintain our level of investment, and we maintain at this moment around a force in terms of man years of about 3,200 man years of development in the company, which is pretty much the same prior to the crisis.

"We believe that we're able to address challenges faced by suppliers in reaching customers where ever they are with our mobile offerings. They add tremendous value in productivity for the professional and in terms of having access to organised information. That's where we're determined to continue investing."

Amadeus recently conducted a study into the needs of the travel management company (TMC), corporate travel managers and the individual traveller. Entitled Upwardly Mobile, Amadeus' whitepaper was written in partnership with, and supported by, the Association of Corporate Travel Executives (ACTE).

The study highlighted a deficiency in the level of mobile technology that had been offered by Amadeus and other technology providers, Mr Pozo said. The study concluded that mobility was one area in which further work was needed.

"It's not surprise that we're came up with AMP to efficiently manage itineraries, to have the possibility to manage travel approvals while travelling, and the mobile travel assistant where you're able to reach the customer with SMS alerts.

"All of these aspects, our research showed were of very high value to our customers and needed better service. We took the results of this study as a way to educate us and as a guide to what we needed to do next."

Jean-Noel Lau Keng Lun, head of product management for the Amadeus IT Group, explained that the Amadeus' latest mobile suite would help it tap into a relatively new area of technology.

Jean-Noel Lau Keng Lun

He said: "We recognise that the penetration of mobile devices in the market is going to create a new channel, and a new way to experience travel. It's a channel that is present during the point of experience. Before technology was mostly at the point of booking, or point of expense where you're back at the office, but now we finally have something where we can reach out to the traveller while they're travelling."

Mr Lau Keng Lun said Amadeus had adopted a "holistic approach" to corporate travel management, well integrated into the e-Travel Management product.

"You can already find products or gadgets that enable you to get an itinerary on your mobile. Our approach was rather different. You have your point of booking, your SBT, which has to be a natural extension. You have your booking start at one point, then you travel, then you have to input it into your expense tool. It's all interlinked within the overall corporate travel management activity and product suite," he said.

One feature Amadeus is using to market its suite is the ability to track travellers by SMS. In the event of an emergency, or purely to ensure compliance, a travel manager can look up which employees are in a particular area according to itinerary and contact them by SMS via Mobile Travel Assistant. But it is not tracking in the true sense of the word as a response from the traveller is needed.

"SMS is within the boundaries of proper ethics," Mr Lau Keng Lun said. "When you start to get into GPS and people tracking, you open up another can of worms. We haven't gone in that direction yet. I don't know what the future will bring, but it's not in the immediate future for us."

While much of the new suite relies on SMS technology, the AMP itinerary manager is a separate java-based application available on Windows Mobile, Symbian and BlackBerry operating systems, allowing on- and off-line itinerary management. Mr Lau Keng Lun revealed that Amadeus is soon to join the iPod generation, by offering an AMP "app" for the iPhone.

The new mobile suite is linked to Amadeus' 12.1 release of its e-Travel Management product, due for the end of this month. But it is already live and proving popular with Amadeus' large corporate customers such as Nokia.

"We are talking here of an instant type of information where you just want to check your detail or confirm something, you don't really need a human interaction. The sheer convenience of getting an answer within a few seconds of sending an SMS has won over the people using it. It's tried and tested, and we have seen the uptake of this service as being really, really high," Mr Lau Keng Lun said finally.