Amadeus aims to transition its original e-Travel Management
corporate booking tool customers to the Amadeus Cytric Travel & Expense
platform during 2018. Amadeus bought a majority stake in Cytric owner i:FAO in
2014 and announced in early 2016 that all development work would subsequently
be devoted
to Cytric.
Now, after expanding and evolving Cytric, including integrating
features from e-Travel, Amadeus is ready for its mass migration. "We aim
to move our customers in 2018," said Arlene Coyle, Amadeus chief
commercial officer for sales and marketing to corporations. "2017 was the
year of planning and building the ability to transfer profiles, preferences,
policies and so on to Cytric. 2018 is the year when the big shifts happen."
Asked when Amadeus will sunset e-Travel, a spokesperson later added, "We
are on track to complete the transition by end 2018."
Coyle said the upgraded Cytric is "a platform, not a booking
tool," offering "multiple access points rather than being tied to a
single interface." In addition to what she described as the "classic
booking tool," Amadeus launched Smart Trip in 2017, a version of the
three-click booking technology it developed for client Daimler's FiveStar
project. Cytric also debuted on Salesforce in July and will go live in
Microsoft Outlook within the next few weeks, Coyle said.
In January or February, Amadeus also plans to roll out a trip
assistant that offers booking options in response to e-mails from travelers
that state the desired point of departure, point of arrival and dates. "The
key use case is a human resources department running lots of interviews,"
said Coyle. "You send [a proposed itinerary by e-mail] to the interviewee,
asking if it's fine; they say yes, and you forward it to the booking tool."
2017 also has seen the expansion of Cytric's geographic reach and
content. It launched in Japan and Singapore, but Australia and New Zealand have
been delayed until the new year because of what Coyle said is an unconventional,
matrix-led approach to fare filing by Air New Zealand.
Non-global distribution system content additions include Spanish
national rail operator Renfe, Italian train operator Trenitalia, Swedish Rail and
Swedish airport taxi service Flygtaxi, as well as low-cost carriers in Latin
America.
Expense tool improvements include machine-learning technology that
improves the accuracy of optical character recognition of scanned receipts from
60 percent to 90 percent, Coyle said. Amadeus also is working on a feature that
will allow travelers to scan multiple receipts in one go by video-recording
them.