HRS and Amadeus agree strategic partnership

HRS and Amadeus agree strategic partnership

17 January 2012

HRS is expanding the distribution channels for its hotel partners. HRS, the worldwide leading hotel portal for corporate customers has entered into a cooperation agreement with Amadeus, a leading travel technology partner and transaction processor for the global travel and tourism industry. This agreement comes into effect immediately. The strategic partnership with the Amadeus IT Group gives hotels affiliated to HRS access to the global booking systems of Amadeus. Once integrated all HRS hotel partners will be bookable worldwide by the approximately 91,100 travel agents and 65,900 airline sales offices, which use the Amadeus system. In 2010 the Amadeus system processed more than 850 million invoiced travel transactions.

For the first time, more than 50,000 hotels, which were up to now exclusively by HRS can be booked using a GDS (Global Distribution System). This means HRS is becoming the largest content supplier to Amadeus and is enhancing the hotel portfolio with mainly independent hotels. With this cooperation, HRS is opening the door for its hotel partners to global travel agency sales, and is providing access to Travel Management Companies (TMCs) and large corporate clients that were previously almost exclusively reserved for the chain hotel sector. Amadeus is serving more than 5,200 companies worldwide, including global players such as Daimler, Bosch, Nokia Siemens Network and Volvo. Travel agents using the Amadeus system are able to reduce their process costs in this way and to benefit from additional hotel content. HRS is strongly represented in large metropolises as well as in rural regions as this is also a requirement from travel agents and their customers. Up to now these hotels were not bookable via any GDS.

"The sales landscape for hotels has never been as diverse as it is today. To offer our hotel partners broad distribution from a single source, HRS is pursuing a systematic multi-channel strategy and is investing continually in new markets and additional sales channels. With the connection to Amadeus systems, we are offering our hotel partners an additional distribution channel. Here, the connection to the global distribution system via HRS’s integrated end-to-end solution is 10 per cent more cost effective than via competing solutions. There are no other charges for the hotelier over and above the normal HRS commission. With this partnership, we are significantly extending the coverage of our hotel partners and increasing their booking volumes", says HRS Chief Executive Officer Tobias Ragge, underlining the benefits of the cooperation with Amadeus for the hotels.

"As the worldwide leading hotel portal for corporate customers, HRS is the ideal partner to complement Amadeus’ current hotel proposition to bookers. With its extremely broad range of hotels, HRS superbly complements the Amadeus hotel portfolio offering our customers simple access to more than 50,000 hotels which were exclusively distributed through HRS up to now", says Francisco Pérez-Lozao, Vice President New Businesses, Amadeus.

With HRS, hotels control their worldwide sales activities from a single platform. Besides the additional coverage, hotels affiliated to HRS benefit from simple data management. Their data only needs to be entered once via the hotel service portal and with it reaching potential guests worldwide via different distribution channels.

Amadeus has already started the integration of HRS’s content into its distribution system to make it as easy and efficient to book as any GDS content. By Q2 2012, corporations and travel agencies will have access to this content via both Amadeus e-Travel Management – the online self-booking tool used by 5,200 corporations worldwide – and Amadeus Selling Platform – the point of sale solution used by Amadeus travel agents for traditional servicing.