Amadeus' 2006 business results show continued success of diversification and technology investment

Total bookings grew by 5.5% to 499.5m. Online air bookings grew by 25.5% and now represent 16.2% of total air bookings. Amadeus had 31% of the market in travel agency air bookings in 2006, up 1.74 percentage points year-on-year. Total revenue grew by 10.9% to EUR 2,683m.

José Antonio Tazón, President and CEO, Amadeus, comments: "Investment in research and development is the driver of any technology company. Amadeus remains as firmly committed to our investment plans today as we were eighteen months ago when we left the stock exchange. Our investment in the development of leading-edge technology for airlines, travel agencies, hotels and the full range of customers we serve continues to keep our solutions ahead of the marketplace.

In 2006, Amadeus migrated a further four airlines to Amadeus Altéa Customer Management Solution, to take the total number of airlines using our next generation customer management technology to 29. We also expanded our portfolio of travel agency technology with the acquisition of TravelTainment, a German company which develops sophisticated pricing, search and dynamic packaging technology for online leisure travel companies selling direct to consumers. By augmenting our offer in this way, and continuing to migrate our core technology to advanced, open systems, we are confident that Amadeus will remain at the forefront of technology for the travel industry."


Business Highlights

Content for travel agencies and corporations
In 2006, Amadeus made significant progress in bringing crucial low-cost carrier content into the system. Travel agents can now book a total of 48 low-cost carriers in Amadeus, which is 42% of the low-cost carriers in the world. Similarly, Amadeus continues to sign full-content agreements with full-service carriers. By 31 December, 2006, Amadeus had agreements with over 100 airlines around the world, including US majors America West, Northwest Airlines, US Airways and Continental. In the European market, 68 airlines have signed up to Amadeus Full Content Option.

Incorporating an ever-greater number of hotels into the system is another key focus for Amadeus. In 2006, the company added 12,000 hotels to taking the total to 70,000 hotels bookable in Amadeus, an increase of 20%. Amadeus’ Best Available Rate programme guarantees Amadeus the same or lower rates than those offered elsewhere. Over 70 hotel brands signed up to the programme in 2006.

Airline IT
Amadeus spent 2006 consolidating its leading position as a technology provider for airlines. During the year, Amadeus successfully migrated Etihad Airways, Icelandair, Air Astana and Rossiya Russian Airlines to Altéa CMS, enabling the four airlines to completely renew critical applications, from the booking through to check-in stage, within nine months.

Amadeus has also continued to expand its IT services offering to answer the airlines’ need for business transformation. A new Self Service Check-in Kiosk solution was implemented successfully for South African Airways and Icelandair adopted the new Amadeus Revenue Management by PROS to implement more sophisticated yield management techniques. Amadeus also provided consulting services to Egyptair to help the airline leverage Altéa CMS' unique capability to achieve strong financial benefits. Further, Lan Airlines deployed Altéa Reservation desktop, the industry's first browser-based selling and reservation platform, while Finnair automated the ticket change and re-issue process from any location, in any currency, through adopting Amadeus Ticket Changer. During the year, 16 airlines also signed up for Amadeus Revenue Maximisation tools, which help airlines increase revenues through the travel agency channel.

Amadeus continues to lead the industry in helping to reach IATA’s deadline of 100% e-ticketing by the end of 2007. By the end of 2006 Amadeus had enabled e-ticketing for 174 airlines, in 139 countries, and 70% of the air tickets distributed throughout the year were electronic. The company had also established the largest e-ticket interline community; 230 interline agreements, fully 30% of all IATA interline agreements, are e-ticket enabled by Amadeus. Amadeus also announced an agreement with Hahn Air to offer a complete e-ticketing solution, based on Amadeus Ticketing Platform, to airlines with limited resources or limited distribution in certain markets. This collaboration, is helping these airlines to meet the IATA deadline.

Amadeus online booking solutions for airlines enjoyed another successful year. In 2006 ten new airlines including Mexicana, China Eastern, and Etihad Airways, adopted Amadeus e-Travel solutions in 2006 to power their websites. This brings the total number of Amadeus e-Travel-powered airlines to 74. Last year, Amadeus e-Travel won the "World’s Leading Internet Booking Engine Technology Provider" award for the third year in a row. Using Amadeus e-Travel solutions, a number of airlines such as Qantas Airways and Air Canada also scooped 11 prestigious industry and web awards in 2006 for delivering excellence in online user experience.

Hotels
Amadeus' diversification of its offer continued briskly throughout 2006, especially in the hospitality sector. During the year, over 300 hotels chose Amadeus Hotel Revenue Management System. The solution gives hotel chains and individual properties the information they need to charge the right price to the right customer at the right time. Hotels implementing the solution typically see revenue increase by up to 8%.

Golden Tulip Hospitality group selected Amadeus in December to underpin international expansion with centralised technology systems with its Property Management System (PMS), a central, multi-property platform, to deliver an improved guest experience and optimise access to information across the organisation.

In November, Amadeus announced a pioneering travel agency commission management solution to help travel agencies track and claim hotel booking commissions. The solution, called Amadeus Worldwide Commission Manager, was launched in pilot at Hedna, December 2006. Amadeus intends the solution to become the standard in the industry’s long-running effort to solve the hotel commission payment conundrum.

Travel Agency and shopping technology
Amadeus started the year by announcing the launch of Amadeus Call Centre Solution – next generation technology to help cut call-centre costs by 30% by operating a fully automated, truly multinational call centre.

Amadeus announced two industry-firsts in technology for online travel agencies during 2006. Amadeus Master Pricer Calendar, is the first low-fare search to allow consumers to easily view a range of international flight and price options from multiple carriers in a calendar format. The first customer for the solution, lastminute.com, was announced in December.

Another industry first, Amadeus Meta Pricer is the first time that leading low-fare search technology has been combined with the near-universal range of air content of a distribution system like Amadeus’ for the benefit of the metasearch model. The solution brings quality global air content to travel search engines (meta search engines) and helps airlines to cost-efficiently maximise their distribution.

Corporations
Amadeus continues to work closely with travel agent resellers to service the world’s corporate travellers. Indeed, 85% more passenger name records were processed with resellers than in 2005. In 2006, Amadeus extended its global agreement with Carlson Wagonlit to resell Amadeus e-Travel Management and BCD Travel signed a similar reseller agreement for the US. Working with reseller partners, Amadeus was able to attract a number of major companies, including Akzo Nobel via BCD Travel. Daimler Chrysler and Bosch, our largest SAP Travel Management customers, all renewed their contracts and American Express’ announcement of the American Express/Amadeus SME portal during October’s EVP tradeshow in Paris, opened up a whole new market segment for e-Travel Management. Amadeus also gained a number of large, direct accounts in 2006: Amdocs, Telefonica, CNRS (France) and Altria.

Amadeus e-Travel Management upgrades included key differentiating features such as multiple fares, flexible faring options, split ticketing, guest traveller functionality, FareAnalyzer, eConcierge functionality, and direct car connects with Avis, Europcar, Hertz and Sixt, combining the best of the direct connect model with the back-up of the travel management company. Amadeus’ corporate travel management division gained the Cybertrust Security Management Programme (SMP) Certification.

Leisure travel technology and content
The Amadeus Leisure platform was launched in France as a package tour booking solution for travel agents. Selectour – the launch partner – is the largest, independent French travel agency network covering over 550 travel agencies employing 1,600 travel agents. Currently, 17 French tour operators have been connected to the platform. In Finland, Amadeus worked with two of Finland's three largest travel agencies to develop a next generation, multi-channel solution for the distribution of leisure travel content, which includes sophisticated dynamic packaging technology.

Amadeus added two new cruise lines in the first half of this year – Oceania and MSC Cruises – taking its cruise offering to over 18 cruises lines, the highest of all GDSs. Amadeus eCruise was launched in the US, with plans to expand to other markets. Amadeus cruise bookings grew by 200%.

Technology for rail companies
Amadeus signed a global technology deal with AccesRail to enable Rail e-Ticketing, and Deutsche Bahn has entered into a global agreement with AccesRail and Amadeus to allow the railway to display their rail availability and schedules alongside those of airlines on the Amadeus display.

Amadeus also signed a global technology agreement with Eurostar to develop the Eurostar GDS Gateway. For the first time users can book Eurostar alongside airlines on the same system.

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Notes to the editors

Amadeus is the chosen technology partner for providers, sellers, and buyers of travel. The company provides distribution, IT and point-of-sale solutions to help its customers adapt, grow and succeed in the fast changing travel industry. Customer groups include travel providers (airlines, hotels, car rental companies, railway companies, ferry lines, cruise lines, insurance companies and tour operators), travel sellers (travel agencies) and travel buyers (corporations and travellers). Solutions are grouped in four solution categories – Distribution & Content, Sales & e-Commerce, Business Management and Services & Consulting.

Amadeus has central sites in Madrid (corporate headquarters & marketing), Nice (development) and Erding (Operations – data processing centre) and regional offices in Miami, Buenos Aires and Bangkok. At market level, Amadeus maintains customer operations in 76 countries covering more than 215 markets. The company is majority owned by WAM Acquisition, whose shareholders are BC Partners, Cinven, Air France, Iberia and Lufthansa. Amadeus employs over 7,160 employees worldwide, representing 95 nationalities. Amadeus' revenue for the twelve months ended 31 December 2006 was EUR2.683m.

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