New strategic alliances for a new era

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When sector leaders decide to create a strategic alliance, one should pay close attention to all the details. Such alliances may add to each party’s strength and offer them a competitive advantage. It may also happen that some minor candidates follow their example.

The following news item was published last week, at the same time the 32^nd edition of FITUR was published:

Amadeus, renowned leader in technological development and implementation in the travel industry and operator of one of the four biggest GDS internationally, announced the creation of a strategic alliance with the German portal HRS, one of the undeniable leaders in online hotel distribution inEurope.

The alliance constitutes a fusion between opposite concepts of distribution, the integration of which seemed absolutely impossible until only a few years ago.

HRS provides Amadeus with 250,000 hotels, of which approximately 50,000 did not have access to distribution via GDS. The advantages for both partners are apparent: Amadeus gets access to a considerable source of hotel products, thus increasing its product range and HRS expands its distribution channels by adding more than 90,000 travel agencies and 65,000 sales offices of various airlines, all users of the reservation system Amadeus. The travel agencies will offer all the products currently provided by HRS within the Amadeus platform, making searching and booking management easier. Further, 5,000 enterprises using the Amadeus tool e-Travel Management also benefit from the alliance.

Concepts that appeared contrary finally turn out to be perfectly compatible.

It won’t be long before the next steps are taken: Amadeus openly intends to integrate the hotel products of other OTAs, complementing the hotel offer of HRS. It is only a matter of time for similar alliances to be forged within the travel sector. And what might be the most interesting conclusion of this piece of news: it is very probable that due to market pressure and diminishing margins the tourist industry will see more of these alliances between enterprises or groups that a priori were considered eternally incompatible.