Amadeus Aims For Industry-Wide Hotel Reservations Service With Latest Hotel-Tech Acquisition
Photo Credit: Rendering on an Itesso product on iPad. Itesso
Skift Take
In partnership with the InterContintinental Hotels Group, Amadeus is trying to build a hotel industry reservations platform. Other players, including Sabre and other hotel groups, will definitely have something to say about that.
Amadeus is still mostly about airlines and travel agents but it has acquired another hotel company, Netherlands-based Itesso Enterprise Lodging System, as part of Amadeus' mission to build a "community platform" for the hotel industry, much as it did for Star Alliance airlines. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
The acquisition of Itesso, which provides a cloud-based property management system to some 1,800 hotels globally, follows the news that Amadeus is working with the InterContinental Hotels Group to create a guest-reservations system based on a "community model." Amadeus touts this as "a first in the hotel sector and similar to the model Amadeus developed for the global airline industry."
Amadeus has been bulking up on hotel technology in the last couple of years. It acquired events and group specialist Newmarket Technologies in 2013 for $500 million, and is trying to piece together central reservations systems, property management systems, and revenue management systems for a comprehensive hotel industry solution.