Amadeus shows resilience

Amadeus’ global revenue in 2008 grew by 2.2 percent compared with 2007, to €2,861.4m.

Total travel bookings fell by 2.1 percent year-on-year to 526.6m but travel agency air bookings grew slightly, by 0.6 percent, to 364.2m.  

This was achieved in a declining market largely thanks to a 1.7 percentage point gain in market share; Amadeus retains the number one position in travel agency air bookings made through a GDS in 2008 with a market share of 35.6 percent. 

In 2008, 193 million passengers boarded airlines using Amadeus’ flagship IT solution, an increase of 55.9 percent over 2007, when 123.8 million passengers boarded. 

David V. Jones, president and CEO, said, “Amadeus’ business showed a reassuring degree of resilience against the extraordinary financial and trading environment of the second half of last year.” 

“In our global travel distribution services business, we gained 1.7 percentage points in market share which gave some protection against the drop in demand. Looking at how 2009 is developing, travel agencies made 9.1 percent fewer air bookings through Amadeus in the first quarter of 2009 than Q1 2008. This is slightly better than the GDS market as a whole which, we estimate, fell by 13.2 percent over the same period.” 

From now on Amadeus will report the number of passengers carried by airlines using at least two modules of Amadeus’ Altéa Customer Management Solution (CMS).