Travel Companies Will Be Left Out If Not Embrace Technology: Amadeus India CEO

Amadeus India, wholly owned by Bird Group, is an organisation that provides IT and software solutions to the travel companies in India. The company also provides automated tools, for the travel trade industry including customized software products for travel agents and travel service providers.

Amadeus India’s current financial revenue is on track and the company is confident of the double digit growth in the next year as well. Amadeus India currently provides technology solutions to over 5200 travel agencies and some of their major clients are MakeMyTrip and Goibibo, Yatra, Expedia (India).

Talking to BW Businessworld, Rakesh Bansal, CEO, Amadeus India shared that the travel industry is doing good and the growth in this segment will grow with coming years.

For technology service providers things are going smooth post GST. “The way travel agencies use to transact with the Amadeus travel system that has remained more or less the same.”

For the technology service provider perspective things post-GST are okay but travel agencies may face some difficulties given the accounting system they are using.

Rakesh Bansal pointed out that the growth in travel and tourism is going upward and technology has a major role to play in this growth. “The growth is uniform across metro- non-metros and tier I&II cities. Indian economy in travel is growing, people have more disposable income and they are more aware now with the availability of technology and tourist information available at spots.”

Keys to growth
The breed of young traveller which are empowered by internet and online savvy are adding a lot to the business. Business to Business travel is also a boost for the travel sector and the third key to growth is government’s decision of opening new airports in tier II&III cities.

Sharing about Amadeus technology offering, Bansal said, with people looking for faster results in non-metro cities. “We have a product called Amadeus selling platform connect which is a front office solution in any place any kind of situation. These small cities are no longer in need of huge infrastructure or setting up offices. They only need a mobile or tablet.”

Travel leap via technology
There is no doubt that technology has embraced travel and tourism segment in a big way. The turn around time of technology enabled travel operator is better against a non-technology compliant company. “A lot of travel agencies are not talking about technology and if they are not using technology in their day to day work they will possibly be left behind.” He said. 

He shared that different travel companies are on the various stage of technology and some of them are enhancing it on a regular basis. Some of them are early starters, some of them are ahead and some of them are advanced. There are not many organisations investing in technology except for the structured organisation

Amadeus core key focus area is to maintain their customer experience and keep introducing user-friendly products. With a lot of Artificial Intelligence and virtual reality coming into travel and tourism segment, Amadeus is incorporating these technology services in all their offerings. The company spent around $5 billion in research and development globally.