Travel tech behemoth Amadeus has announced an expansion of Amadeus Ventures across the Asia-Pacific region in the first quarter of 2020.
Amadeus Ventures invests in early-stage start-ups sitting at the crossroads of technology and travel by providing funding, industry expertise, technology and customer reach.
Born in 2014 as an innovation vehicle to drive collaboration with the start-up ecosystem, Amadeus has introduced more than 150 start-ups to its business units and has developed more than 20 joint projects with its portfolio companies.
Companies already in the investment portfolio include Refundit, Volantio and Dawex.
Stephanie Strunk, who will represent Amadeus Ventures across the region, said: “Travel start-ups across APAC are frequently disrupting the industry, challenging the way we think about innovation.
“To keep up with the pace of change, funding for travel start-ups is increasing at the same rate, reaching record highs.
“With China leading in this space, we don’t expect the rest of APAC will be that far behind, working on new solutions and ideas to enhance the overall traveller experience”.
Amadeus has also unveiled a new set of AI application programming interfaces (APIs) as part of the Amadeus for Developers program to help start-ups and independent developers.
These APIs will allow developers to build solutions that can predict travel intent, traveller behaviour and flight delays, among others, without needing any prior background in AI or data.
This is the first time in the travel industry that AI capabilities are made available to start-ups and independent developers via open APIs.
Amadeus is providing ready-to-implement predictive models based on valuable insights and functionalities fed by Amadeus’ vast sources of travel data.
