How Amadeus Sets the Bar Sky High for 1.8 billion travellers

As one of the world’s biggest trav­el tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies, Amadeus serves every cor­ner of the trav­el and hos­pi­tal­i­ty indus­try. Air­lines, hotels, casi­nos, sta­di­ums, rail­roads, car rental agen­cies – all rely on Amadeus’ solu­tions to run their oper­a­tions and stay one step ahead of trav­eller needs.

Busi­ness has been soar­ing for Amadeus. In 2018 alone, the com­pa­ny helped board more than 1.8 bil­lion trav­ellers and processed 643 mil­lion book­ings, build­ing on years of sus­tained growth. But to main­tain a high stan­dard of ser­vice and have the abil­i­ty to scale, it need­ed to find ways to work more effi­cient­ly, while deliv­er­ing more per­son­alised expe­ri­ences to its customers.

Amadeus’ pri­ma­ry chal­lenge was serv­ing cus­tomers across dif­fer­ent chan­nels, which was impact­ing effi­cien­cy. To para­phrase Amadeus’ Chief Mar­ket­ing Offi­cer, Jus­si Wack­lin, it was tak­ing days to make a sim­ple update to an Amadeus web­page. This did not mar­ry up to the scale and speed at which the busi­ness was oper­at­ing or the expec­ta­tions from its customers.

Amadeus teamed up with Adobe to put in place a sin­gle uni­fied plat­form able to deliv­er a seam­less cus­tomer expe­ri­ences across every touch­point. By mov­ing its oper­a­tions to Adobe Expe­ri­ence Man­ag­er, Amadeus has empow­ered its employ­ees to work faster and stay on top of cus­tomer needs. “With Adobe Expe­ri­ence Man­ag­er, what we are able to do is much faster, with a much bet­ter user expe­ri­ence for our own peo­ple, which also saves us a lot of time and mon­ey,” says Wack­lin.

A plat­form mod­el pro­vides Amadeus with a scal­able appli­ca­tion that enables it to con­tin­u­ous­ly grow. The organisation’s broad­er ambi­tion is to draw on tech­nol­o­gy to shape a “bet­ter future of trav­el”, with a col­lab­o­ra­tive approach to inno­va­tion at the heart of its strategy.

While these improve­ments to con­tent veloc­i­ty are a major com­po­nent of Amadeus’ trans­for­ma­tion, its ambi­tion extends much fur­ther. Amadeus’ dig­i­tal team has also built intel­li­gent mod­ules direct­ly into the Adobe plat­form, allow­ing them to deliv­er more per­son­alised expe­ri­ences online. With a sin­gle click, vis­i­tors to the Amadeus web­site can hide all the con­tent that isn’t rel­e­vant to them and quick­ly find the ser­vices they need.

The com­pa­ny has put data at the heart of its strat­e­gy, using ana­lyt­ics and A/B test­ing to under­stand which con­tent and online expe­ri­ences res­onate best with cus­tomers. By col­lect­ing and analysing data in real-time and mak­ing informed deci­sions, Amadeus can bet­ter tai­lor expe­ri­ences to each cus­tomer, while sav­ing costs on con­tent development.

Amadeus now has the foun­da­tion to deliv­er true omnichan­nel expe­ri­ences, where con­tent seam­less­ly scales and adapts to dif­fer­ent chan­nels. Orches­trat­ing all of this con­tent and data is no small task and with Adobe Man­aged Ser­vices, Amadeus now has the con­fi­dence in avail­abil­i­ty and scal­a­bil­i­ty. As Wack­lin says, “From mobile devices, to iPads, to com­put­ers, all of this hap­pens and we don’t have to wor­ry about it. The way Adobe deliv­ers these expe­ri­ences is extreme­ly smooth for our end users”.

For Amadeus, dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion is about chang­ing the way its peo­ple work, fuelled by the right solu­tions to sup­port this evo­lu­tion. Wack­lin is refresh­ing­ly trans­par­ent on this point, reflect­ing – “Our entire mar­ket­ing and sales would be hand­i­capped with­out this tech­nol­o­gy”. This approach has paid major div­i­dends so far, and with a robust plat­form for growth in place, Amadeus looks set to retain its pole posi­tion in the trav­el indus­try for years to come.

Find out more about deliv­er­ing per­son­alised, con­tent-led expe­ri­ences here.