Amadeus’ Full Recovery

Amadeus’ Full Recovery Is Getting Closer, But It’s Not Here Yet

 Maroto said the company is still highly focused on upgrading its technology and services, including its growing hotel tech products, payments services, and migration to the cloud. 

The plan for Amadeus is that its cloud migration in partnership with Microsoft will be complete in 2026. Sabre’s target is to complete most of its migration to Google Cloud by the end of 2024, and there was a question as to whether Amadeus should speed up the process. 

“No, we are not accelerating. We are really doing as we expected. It’s a complex project that has timelines,” Maroto said. “We have already started to see costs of the cloud migration into our [profit and loss statement] this year, and therefore we’ll keep with the plan that we had originally.”

Amadeus and other distribution companies are also growing new distribution capability (NDC) services, a next-generation distribution system that’s meant to enhance communications between airlines and travel agents without the traditional global distribution system intermediary. 

American Airlines in April stopped selling almost half its airfares through traditional channels, instead selling them exclusively through its own website and NDCs. Despite industry criticism about shakeups caused by such changes, Amadeus and others want to make sure they can offer the NDC option if that’s what airline customers choose to use.  

“Some airlines have different strategies around the world. What is important for us is to really have a solution and keep the platform attractive enough for all airlines and the travel agencies to be part of that,” Maroto said.

While NDC is still a small share of the overall distribution, Maroto thinks that could change in the next couple of years. 

Many of the air distribution contracts that Amadeus is signing include some NDC component. Most recently, British Airways said NDC content is now available to travel agencies through the Amadeus platform. 

“We are working to really make that seamless and a good reality. It will still take, in my view, some time until this is fully implemented process,” Maroto said. “I believe 2024 will be a year where the volumes could start playing a relevant size.”