Luis Maroto, president and CEO of Amadeus, estimated last Tuesday that the combination of travel and new technologies moves more than 90 billion euros worldwide each year. Given this business opportunity, the Spanish multinational claims to have the technology, capabilities and resources to access almost half of that latent market, around 40 billion euros. As he explained in the presentation of a report on future trends in the tourism industry, “travel was already one of the first industries to adapt to the Internet and now the same is happening with the possibilities offered by generative artificial intelligence.” With more than 200 use cases currently underway in his company, the Amadeus chief executive recognizes that his group feels “privileged to be at this crossroads.”
According to the data that Maroto shared with the international press, commercial travel activity is expected to grow to represent close to 10% of the world’s GDP, a circumstance that, together with the combination of technology, represents an opportunity of extraordinary value for Amadeus. Faced with this challenge, the multinational has evolved in recent years to evolve from a content distribution platform for the travel and tourism sectors to a large technology company, with impact in different areas.
Given this driving force, Amadeus has doubled its workforce, up to nearly 20,000 people, “a figure that continues to grow every year.” Among the keys to this improvement, Maroto alluded to his firm’s commitment to innovation, “a concept that is at the heart of the company.” In that way, “Amadeus invests almost 20% of its revenue in R&D, making us the fifth largest investor in R&D in Europe“.
The same executive recalled that Amadeus’ innovation lines are no longer the same as they were a few years ago, “so that it is currently difficult to distinguish between what is a technology company and what is not, with increasingly blurred boundaries.” . In his opinion, “we live in an innovation economy”, an environment that requires Amadeus to make every effort to constantly progress and thus offer the solutions that customers ask for.
In this sense, the business response that Amadeus provides to the challenge of growth follows three paths: “organic innovation in the search for new products and new solutions that generate future opportunities for us; work with partners, with a close relationship with many companies from all over the world to try to enrich us with their capabilities, to help us contribute ideas and solutions to the industry; and also through acquisitions, with the aim of attracting this innovation. “Amadeus has made purchases in the last 10 years and we will continue to do so in the futureas long as the acquisitions fit our purpose as a company and our strategy.
On the other hand, Maroto stressed that his group’s investment is “responsible”, that is, it is not just about contributing ideas, but about being sure that these initiatives can be scalable and reliable industrial solutions.” Regarding the phenomenon of AI, Maroto noted that “there are many opportunities that Amadeus has been working on for years, but now Generative AI fosters new capabilities.”“.
In any case, Maroto expressed his group’s commitment to ensure that Generative AI is based on ethical criteria. In response to this demand, Amadeus has signed the EU commitment to responsible AI. “We have to be sure that all the innovation we undertake takes into account all the challenges that lie ahead with this technological evolution,” he explained. In the same informative forum, Maroto also highlighted sustainability and talent acquisition as two of the main challenges currently facing the travel industry.
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