SpiceJet and Amadeus strengthen partnership in the Gulf

Looking to the future of travel in the Gulf, SpiceJet—India’s second biggest budget carrier—and Amadeus recently organized a series of empowerment sessions for the region’s travel community held in Dubai, UAE.

More than 100 travel consultants participated in the sessions, which focused on how the Gulf’s travel industry can collaborate to better define and deliver offers to travel agents, corporates, and individual travellers.  A number of success cases were also presented during the sessions, including SpiceJet’s MoU with Gulf Air and codeshare agreement with Emirates.

Ernesto Sanchez Beaumont, managing director of Amadeus Gulf, briefed audiences on how the travel tech company is working with ecosystem partners to create fully-open systems, to better harness the intelligent use of data, and to integrate new interfaces and architectures that connect travellers to the journeys they want.

The sessions follow an agreement signed between SpiceJet and Amadeus earlier this year for a new distribution agreement that gives Amadeus’ global network of travel sellers access to unique content from the airline—including a range of fares and prices—through the Amadeus Travel Platform. The agreement marks the first time that SpiceJet is working with a distribution partner.

“Offering travellers the opportunity to choose how, where, and when to buy travel online is fundamental to meeting their needs today,” says keynote speaker Ernesto Sanchez Beaumont, managing director of Amadeus Gulf. “To realize the full value of their inventory in 2020 and beyond, it is essential for the Gulf’s travel community to differentiate their offers beyond just price, while ensuring that more agencies and travellers can connect with their growing networks.”

The Middle East travel industry currently has a growing online penetration rate with around 33% of bookings being made online in 2018. An Amadeus report earlier this year revealed that the region is especially receptive to growth in the online travel sector with an increase of 14% expected year-on-year, which will make the MENA region the second-fastest growing online travel market in the world.