As he revealed plans for expansion into Australia by the E-Travel business unit, Amadeus Global Travel Distribution managing director Ian Wheeler late last year took a few shots at competitors.
"This is turning into an economies-of-scale game, and if you look at the European players today who focus on one country, they have adapted well for that country, but they don't have the economies to make it work," said Wheeler, partly referring to France's KDS and Germany's I:FAO. "They're either all up for sale or are struggling with cash flow. We seem to beat them every time, if not on functionality then on price, because they say, 'We need this price to stay alive' and the corporate says, 'The value difference is so great, it's not justified.' "
Wheeler's swagger reflects the maturing of Amadeus' corporate online booking strategy more than two years after its acquisition of E-Travel
(BTN, Aug. 13, 2001), which had been fading from its spot as second among large U.S. corporate accounts behind Sabre's GetThere.
Even if E-Travel lagged in the United States, plenty of opportunities remain among multinationals that, for the most part, have yet to formulate global online booking programs. Although some have made progress, it remains unclear whether it's best to use products on a national level or to attempt to consolidate with a single worldwide vendor. Cisco is trying to use Sabre products everywhere, while Siemens is employing a handful of different products in different nations. Cendant last year announced Nike as a new Highwire user, but a GetThere spokesperson noted that Nike uses Sabre's product elsewhere.
Oracle Corp. last year decided to broaden the relationship with its former subsidiary, E-Travel, as its managed travel program continued to expand in Europe, according to Oracle EMEA travel manager Marilyn Clifton. E-Travel's other big clients include Daimler Chrysler in Europe, which is using Outtask's Cliqbook in the United States, Ingersoll-Rand Corp. and Deutsche Bank.
Amadeus' global presence appears to have breathed life into E-Travel's Aergo as the tool to beat on the multinational scene. According to research firm PhoCusWright, "It is anticipated that Aergo should realize strong growth in Europe as a result of Amadeus' strong global distribution system position and growth in central, southeastern and eastern Europe." While PhoCusWright's latest report on online corporate travel cited anecdotal evidence that European self-booking adoption levels still are in the single digits at best, it called "internationalization" of booking tools "the next wave."
This is Amadeus' sweet spot.
"We're not trying to make our product the most efficient in Nigeria and Ecuador," Wheeler said. "We're saying we have 10 top corporate markets and have a product that is suitable for them. Maybe it's not 110 percent adopted to the local market as a local player might be, but enabling multinational companies is always a major part of our strategy."
The new Australian division joins E-Travel offices (as part of Amadeus offices) in Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Scandinavia, Spain, Thailand, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Wheeler sees these offices directly serving clients among the world's roughly "250 mega corporations," but noted that the bigger opportunity is to work with such partners as American Express and TQ3 Travel Solutions to bring multinational online booking to large corporates that book upwards of 15,000 trips a year but whose programs "don't justify, say, m6 per transaction. That wouldn't cover sales and technology for them, and so there are no real products that have been catering to them, although they behave the same as an IBM. We think our partner agencies can use their own community to serve others rather than set up site after site."
The "communities" concept allows corporations or travel management companies using Aergo's version six to set up and alter country- or account-specific sites within a greater umbrella without having to get E-Travel's help for every change. E-Travel said each layer of the booking tool adapts to local needs, including GDS, rail suppliers, language and currency.
These capabilities show the progress of E-Travel's technology development under Amadeus, Wheeler said. "We have a new architecture that cuts implementation time and gives real ownership to a user who can create lots of customized sites without having to come to us every time," he said. "We've stripped out all the technology speak, and we have a lot of wizards that the administrator uses to set up different sites and policies. You have to understand travel to set up a site, but not technology. Once you're happy, you can have a dry run—go live on a staging server to test it out—and then later you press a button to make it live in production and replace the existing site."
"While several online booking vendors offer technology with some local market features, such as languages and currencies, E-Travel simplifies the process for us as it is managed from a single administration module," said Oracle's Clifton in an October press statement.
Also complementing the latest version are a new user interface with customizable "skins" and a more robust international faring engine that produces up to 200 options on a single city pair, including published, negotiated and Web fares.
Unlike GDS competitors within Cendant and Sabre, Wheeler added, "We are not doing fulfillment. We're focusing on the technology and making it available to our top fulfillment partners. We want to be different."