Advancing Amadeus' certification level in IATA's New
Distribution Capability (NDC) comes at a cost, but Amadeus is no stranger to technology
expenditures, CEO Luis Maroto said.
"There will be costs, yes," Maroto said during the
company's financial earnings call Friday. "This is an investment and it is
complex."
NDC is a new set of technological standards for how airlines
provide airfare content to distributors.
However, Maroto said it is not unlike other technology
investments his company has made over the years, and that Amadeus is already
working with airlines on NDC standards.
"There will be investments done by the different GDSs
to try to optimize the flows with the airlines and the flows with the travel
agencies, because at the end, NDC -- which is just a pure technology evolution --
could be beneficial to all the parties if we find the right way of supporting
all the parties," he said.
Amadeus is already Level 3 certified as an IT provider, but
its GDS business is on track to gain Level 3 certification as an aggregator in
2018. That timeline is in line with recent NDC updates from other GDSs.
Both Sabre /Travel-News/Travel-Technology/Sabre-s-Q3-bookings-grow-despite-hurricanes?ct=
and Travelport /Travel-News/Travel-Technology/Hurricanes-knock-down-Travelport-US-business-in-Q3
said this week they, too, will likely be
Level 3 certified in 2018 (for Travelport, the end of 2017 is a possibility).
In the third quarter, Amadeus reported an 8.9% revenue
increase, to 3.7 billion euros.