Our History

Amadeus turned 30 this year and we marked the milestone by celebrating 30 years of better journeys, collaboration and innovation. 

We continue to expand our Airline IT footprint with the migration of Southwest Airlines’ to Altéa and a landmark deal with Air Canada. Additionally, our new Hospitality IT customer, Premier Inn, signed up for CRS, PMS and payments.

The US $830m acquisition of Navitaire gives helps us serve a wider group of customers. It's also an important step for us in the low-cost and hybrid segments of the airline industry. 

Amadeus receives the ‘2016 Red Hat Innovator of the Year’ for outstanding and innovative use of open source technologies.

Our successful year consisted of acquisitions of Hotel SystemPro , AirIT and Navitaire, as well as the partnership with InterContinental Hotels Group .

We launched key research pieces covering data, payment security, airline merchandising, and most importantly – the Future Traveler Tribes 2030 reports .

We always wanted to shape the future of travel. In 2014, we signed a contract with Southwest Airlines and implemented a single reservation system for the carrier’s domestic and international flights.

We signed a long-term partnership with BeNe Rail International. We wanted to create a new rail community IT platform, covering all end-to-end processes for rail travel in Europe.

SriLankan Airlines (the first carrier in the Indian Subcontinent that signed for Altéa), adopted our next generation IT suite for management of mission-critical reservations, ticketing, inventory and departure control processes. 

For $500 million, we acquired Newmarket International , a leading provider of cloud-based group and event IT solutions to the hotel industry. 

We also maintained our top ranking as one of the leading European companies for investment in Research & Development (R&D).

We received the Air Transport News award for the best IT company, as well as extended our 10-year collaboration with Accor, the world’s leading hotel operator.

Our Rail GDS joined forces with Swedish Rail Operator SJ. This collaboration created the first major integration on that territory and made rail a genuine alternative to flying on some routes.

The European Commission highlighted us as one of the leading companies for investment in Research and Development.

We entered the IBEX 35 index of leading Spanish companies.

We sold Opodo , the leading pan-European online travel agency and Dynamique Hôtels Management became the first customer to fully implement our Hotel Platform. 

We partnered with Korean Air and Topas and signed our 100^th customer, AviancaTaca, to our Altéa System

We became a public company again with a successful IPO on the Spanish stock market.

We were the first organization to comply with IATA’s Electronic Miscellaneous Document standard. 

Our Data Centre, with more than 670 million transactions in 2009, received a prestigious Energy-efficient Enterprise certification from TÜV Süd.

We developed Amadeus Extreme Search, a solution that enabled travelers to custom their airline shopping experience.

We rolled out the Amadeus Altéa Departure Control System, which was used by 162 airlines for reservation, inventory or departure control.

Our company moved into the mobile technology arena for airports, working alongside with Air France, IER and Nice Airport on the development of mobile boarding passes. 

We signed an agreement with the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) in order to obtain data from its Carbon Emissions Calculator.

We signed the Arab Air Carriers Organization (AACO) deal with 12 carriers, with 6 additional carriers joining the agreement.

We launched our revenue management system for ferries, which helped achieve the best possible profit on each crossing.

Amadeus acquired the rail IT company Onerail  and signed a long-term pan-European agreement with European Travel Interactive (eTRAVELi).

We managed up to 2 million travel reservations per day and processed more than half a billion travel bookings per year.  

Amadeus Altéa became a huge success, migrating 13 airlines to our system. Furthermore, Qantas took the leap and became the first fully operational airline on our platform.

We also signed a collaboration agreement with the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) in order to join initiatives in the development of global tourism.

As part of brand evolution and service expansion, we changed our name to Amadeus IT Group.

The European Commission recognized us as a leading European travel and tourism company, based on our R&D investments.

We opened up our Innovation Department in Sophia Antipolis, completed the acquisition of TravelTainment and signed global technology partnership with Eurostar.

Our leveraged buyout by Cinven and BC Partners took us off the stock market and back into private hands.

We adopted ‘Your technology partner’ as our tagline and launched our new corporate website and global advertising campaign.

Amadeus won a major contract for Star Alliance, building a platform to improve integration between the members within code sharing, customer profiles and business rules.

For the first time, our annual revenues surpassed €2 billion.

We signed Qantas as our first Amadeus Altéa Inventory customer.

We launched Amadeus Master Pricer, a ground-breaking value-based pricing system for airline distribution.

We acquired Optims, the leading European hotel IT solutions supplier

We handled nearly 2,500 transactions per second and had over 23 million active PNRs in our central system.

In the US market, we acquired the Airline Automation Inc., a leading provider of revenue integrity services.

We became part owner of Opodo, the pan-European online portal that already successfully operated internet travel sites in Germany, UK and France.

New national marketing companies (NMCs) opened in Hong Kong, East Africa, Iran, Indonesia, Kuwait and Libya.

By signing two respected airlines, we took a step forward in the creation of new generation inventory and departure control systems.

We launched our global business unit for online corporate and leisure travel solutions.

We announced the acquisition of SMART, the NMC for Scandinavia, Latvia, Lithuania and Germany.

Amadeus became the first GDS that enabled 7,000 Chinese travel agencies to book hotels and car rentals.

In order to support our partnership with Qantas, we launched a development site in Sydney, Australia.

We started the development of Altéa Customer Management Solution (CMS) –new generation IT platform for the airline industry.

Amadeus became the first GDS to receive the ISO 9001:2000, the accreditation for successful management of quality practices.

In the meantime, in the US, we announced the acquisition of e-Travel.

Almost 10 years after the first PNR, our central system processed up to 1.6 million net bookings per day.

We launched a new browser-based reservation tool: Amadeus Pro Web.

British Airways and Qantas partnered with us to develop the next generation customer IT management solutions. We opened a support and development site near London’s Heathrow Airport and announced plans to open another in Sydney, Australia.

This evolution lead us to establish a new business division: Airline IT.

We introduced an Initial Public Offering (IPO) and entered the IBEX-35 shortly after. By the end of the year, our company was listed on the Madrid, Barcelona, Paris and Frankfurt stock exchanges.

Our Executive Briefing Centre (EBC) opened in Sophia Antipolis.

We set in motion Amadeus e-Ticket server, the world’s first neutral electronic ticketing solution, as well as Amadeus Value Pricer. This enabled our customers to search and negotiate fares without completing a Passenger Name Record (PNR).

We successfully connected all System One users to our global distribution system (GDS). As part of the largest travel industry migration, more than 183,000 travel agencies and airline sales office terminals joined us.

We processed 1 million bookings in a single day and became world’s largest GDS.  

Amadeus was awarded with ISO 9002 certification, the accreditation for customer support and data management services. We launched our Follow The Sun help desk initiative.

After 10 years of successful business leadership, we had more than 1300 employees from 45 different countries.

This year, we hosted our 4^th customer Mosaic conference in Barcelona, and we gathered over 2500 delegates.

Our new central Miami office opened in January and welcomed 85 new staff.

New NMCs also opened in Australia, New Zealand, Madagascar, Pakistan, Southern Africa, Taiwan, Romania, the Philippines and Ukraine. 

In addition, Icelandair launched the first Amadeus-powered travel website.

We created a website for travelers, www.amadeus.net, which offered consumers the opportunity to find out more about airline availability and destination information.

In Belgium, we introduced Amadeus Pro Tempo to the local market.

This year, we reached 300 million bookings on our platform!

We added around 9,000 travel agencies all over the world by acquiring System One from Continental Airlines.

Amadeus opened a new Asia Pacific office, strengthening our existing local partnerships and supporting our expansion in this region.

We enhanced our international rail offers through agreements with British Passenger Services, French railway SNCF and Italian Railways.

We continued to be recognized as a number 1 system for international travel reservations, with over 102,000 travel agencies and airline sales office terminals that joined our system.

We signed Austrian Airlines as our 100^th customer!

Amadeus confirmed a distribution agreement with French state-owned railway SNCF.

Our platform Amadeus Hotels was enhanced by the implementation of Negotiated Rates, which allowed hotel chains to load different rates for the same room type.

We were chosen as the Top Computer Reservation System (CRS) in Europe. Over 60% of European travel agencies were connected to our system and it marked one of the largest training and migration exercises in the history of electronic data processing.

We introduced Amadeus Negotiated Fares.

Our first PNR was created on January 7^th at 2:47 am and it was the beginning of millions of bookings.

Airline sales offices successfully migrated to our platform, replacing their national systems for all reservation requirements. More than 16,000 terminals in the sales offices of Air France, Iberia and Lufthansa in 120 countries successfully joined us.

We launched our Amadeus Cars and Amadeus Hotels platform, which offered easy access to information on more than 10,000 car rental locations and hotel properties worldwide.

New Air content offered our users a worldwide access to schedule displays, extensive flight solutions, and unbiased rankings, linked to 45,000 terminals.

Amadeus Pro content was officially launched. It provided travel agency customers user-friendly interfaces to our central system and products.

After 4 years in the market, we had over 550 employees from 38 countries and we celebrated the opening of our data processing center.

Amadeus Fare Quote was now used in France, Belgium and selected African countries while using the Air France reservation system infrastructure.

We unveiled the first prototype of Amadeus Pro, the revolutionary interface that could save travel agents 50-80% of time and effort when making flight, car or hotel reservations. 

We signed with our first Asian partner, Thai Airlines.

Network Amanet went live and enabled travel agencies to connect to national reservation systems.

We launched new NMCs in Belgium and Scandinavia.

Our software development center in Nice, France was inaugurated after being created in just seven months.

Our first NMC was opened in Finland, soon after Finnair decided to join our network, followed by Austria and France.

We were the first corporation to introduce and use the European Currency Unit (ECU).

We were officially born on October 21^st, when Amadeus Marketing SA was founded by 4 airlines; Air France, Iberia, Lufthansa and SAS.

Our headquarters were in Madrid, Spain, and the first employees came from these 4 carriers.

The founders announced their vision for an independent and neutral global distribution system (GDS). They committed to a combined investment of almost $300 million.