Travel technology company Amadeus has posted marginal growth in profit and revenue for the 2018 calendar year, helped in large part by its IT solutions business.
Amadeus’ adjusted group profit was $2.1 billion for the 12 months to 31 December 2018 – up 0.6 per cent on 2017.
Revenue rose 6.4 per cent to $9.2 billion, with IT solutions revenue growing nearly 12.6 per cent and distribution revenue increasing by 2.8 per cent.
The company’s full-year earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation lifted by 8.3 per cent to $3.8 billion.
Amadeus’ travel agency (TA) air bookings rose 2.1 per cent to 580.2 million in 2018, with TA air bookings for the Asia-Pacific region growing 11.7 per cent.
The company’s number of passengers boarded increased by 11.9 per cent to just under 1.9 billion.
In a release to shareholders, Amadeus said it was currently undertaking key projects to support its mid to long-term
“Among them is the NDC-X program and the development of Amadeus’ platform to combine content from all sources, ensuring easy adoption in the market with minimum disruption,” the company said.
“NDC-X is part of the evolution of Amadeus’ travel platform which will bring together all relevant content – including air, hotel and other travel content – from any source (EDIFACT, NDC, proprietary APIs and other aggregated content) to be distributed via any user interface or device.”
For airlines, the company is investing in merchandising and personalisation solutions to offer enhanced shopping and retailing tools, as well solutions to optimise revenue.
In the case of travel agencies, meta-search engines and corporations, Amadeus’ research and development efforts are focused on its cloud-based, new-generation selling platform, search engines and self-booking and travel expense management tools.
In hospitality, the company said it is maintaining its investment in the development of its new-generation central reservation system and its property management system.
Along with these initiatives, Amadeus said it was continuing to invest heavily in customer implementations and in its shift to new technologies (including artificial intelligence and machine learning) and cloud services.
“System reliability, availability and security remain key priorities for Amadeus and as are also a key focus in terms of R&D investments,” it added.
