03 Nov 2017

Amadeus announces win for hospitality and payments as Premier Inn comes on board

Amadeus has announced that Premier Inn has signed up for its hospitality unit’s CRS and PMS products, as well as its relatively new payments platform.

The news came at the same time as Amadeus announced its Q3 earnings, with the top line figures showing that for the first nine months of the year revenue increased 8.9% to €3,686.6 million with EBITDA up more than 10% to €1,466.3 million.

Adjusted profit for the period came in €846.7 million up  14.7%.

The Premier Inn announcement says that hotel chain will roll-out Amadeus’ combined central reservation system (CRS) and Property Management System (PMS) across its 765 properties.

The native modular-based capabilities on offer can be “seamlessly integrated into Premier Inn’s system” and that the chain “will be able to use Amadeus’ capabilities as a foundation for its digital marketing transformation program”.

Francisco Pérez-Lozao, senior vice president, strategic growth business at Amadeus, says:

“Fragmented IT systems and de-centralised data are the biggest obstacles for hoteliers to truly deliver a personalised guest experience. From the beginning, it has been our goal to eliminate these IT barriers”.

He adds that this deal “marks a milestone in expanding and diversifying our business in the hospitality space”.

The earnings release offers an update on Amadeus Hospitality’s other major client, IHG.

As part of the new business highlights it “continued to advance with InterContinental Hotels Group – initiated the planned Guest Reservation System roll-out in the fourth quarter of 2017, with full deployment expected by late 2018 / early 2019.”

By signing up to the payments platform, Premier Inn will be able “to process customer payments much more efficiently, and therefore improving the customer experience.”

The Q3s meanwhile show growth in both its distribution and IT units.

Year-to-date travel agency air bookings grew 6.0% to 434.4 million, while its “non-air” volumes were up 5.3% to 47.6 million.

It also says it has lifted its market share for air bookings by 0.5%  to  with the usual caveat that this excludes Russia, China and Japan.

Passengers boarded – the  metric of choice for IT – increased 19.4% to 1,228.1 million.

Related reading:

IHG reservation system advances with direct business firmly on the roadmap