Amadeus GDS: What is it used for?

What is Amadeus GDS?

Amadeus GDS is one of the hospitality industry’s most popular global distribution system vendors. It provides a platform for hotels and travel companies to advertise their offerings to a broad marketplace that is accessed by travel agents. With connections to 400+ airlines and 50+ rail, cruise and ferry operators, Amadeus is a gateway to new revenue opportunities.

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What is Amadeus GDS used for?

Amadeus GDS is used for tapping into a huge network where travel supply and demand intersect. For hotels, it’s a chance to have their inventory accessed by thousands of traditional travel agents, tour operators, or package sellers.

Who owns Amadeus GDS?

Amadeus GDS is owned by the Amadeus IT Group. They are headquartered in Madrid, Spain, while the central database is located in Germany. How old is Amadeus GDS? Well, the company was founded in 1987 and became the industry’s number one global distributor of travel inventory by 1998.

How many hotels are available via Amadeus GDS?

Amadeus positions itself as having more than one million hotel properties connected to its travel platform. It also states that it generates over 450 million bookings per year.

This blog will take a deep-dive into the importance of Amadeus for your hotel, including what it can achieve and how you can make the most of it as part of your distribution and revenue strategies.

Table of contents

Why is a GDS provider like Amadeus important?

GDS’ vendors like Amadeus provide an important way for large hotels or groups to reach a previously out of reach number of travellers around the world.

The GDS is particularly useful for connecting with corporate travel programs and winning business transient bookings. High-value guests and corporations will engage companies connected to the GDS to book not only accommodation but sometimes entire travel packages.

On top of this is the incentive of meetings and events being booked at your hotel, since this is a large part of the corporate travel market, and becoming a preferred hotel for this type of business will lead to financial stability.

Ultimately, being accessible on the GDS via Amadeus’ marketplace is a powerful way to diversify your distribution and add to your strategy for generating revenue and maximising revenue. Let’s take a look at the full range of benefits in the next section.

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Amadeus GDS meaning for hotel distribution and revenue management

By utilising a connectivity partner like SiteMinder to have a presence on Amadeus and other GDS vendors, your hotel can enjoy a significant boost to both bookings and profit.

A successful strategy depends on diversification, value-added sales, and an ability to capitalise on the right opportunities at the right time.

With a channel like the GDS you’ll see at least five key outcomes:

Access to high-value travellers that includes those who book mid-week and spend more: This will allow you to combat traditional seasonality and help you maximise average daily rate (ADR) as well as boost the profit from every individual booking.

The opportunity to negotiate for exclusive rates and agreements: This will help deliver you certainty around your future occupancy and revenue, giving you more accurate forecasts and a strong foundation from which you can optimise your revenue management strategy.

A chance to become a preferred hotel partner with global businesses: This brings the advantage of a regular flow of bookings that you can rely on yearly or even monthly, and allow you to maximise the value of your loyalty program too.

The ability to host more meetings and events: This will drive up your total revenue, improving your cash flow and potentially boosting your profit if you can minimise your expenses. It’s also a good way to improve your hotel’s overall reputation.
Visibility from leading travel retailers such as travel agents, tour operators, airlines, cruise lines, and more: This gives you global exposure to virtually every corner of the globe, allowing you to connect with guests you would otherwise never be able to reach.

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Amadeus GDS cost, software integration, and training

Some key details that will be important to know if you’re planning to utilise Amadeus at your hotel are things like how much it will cost you, what kind of integration is needed with your software, and whether training, courses, or certification will be required and/or provided.

Let’s see if we can get to the bottom of all of these.

Cost

How much does Amadeus GDS cost? Unfortunately, we can’t provide a definitive cost for using Amadeus at your hotel. What you pay to use the service will depend on how you connect to the GDS. Research is always important, so you gain an understanding of what will be the best investment for your property. If you’re interested in how SiteMinder can help you get connected, enquire now.

Software integration

Typically, you’ll need property management system and channel manager integration to allow your real-time rates and availability to be seamlessly communicated to the GDS.

A connection provider like SiteMinder can really help make this whole process painless, thanks to its superior connectivity and partner ecosystem.

Training

If you’re using a connectivity partner, you won’t need to be trained on Amadeus, but rather the platform you have invested in to manage your distribution, In the case of SiteMinder, full onboarding and support is provided to customers.