Tech investment in tourism to rise by 14%

Amadeus recently released its report on ‘Travel Technology Investment Trends 2024’, which included key players in the travel and tourism industry. In an interview with TRAVTALK, Ernesto Sanchez Beaumont, Managing Director, Amadeus Gulf, shares the purpose behind the study, new findings from it and how it will benefit the industry in future.

TT Bureau

What is the Travel Technology Investment Trends study?

Amadeus has commissioned an online survey with 1,253 senior technology decision makers across the industry (airlines, airports, travel sellers, corporations, payments and hospitality) to understand their technology investment priorities. The research was undertaken in 10 markets – UK, France, Germany, UAE, US, Mexico, Brazil, India, China and Korea – to provide a globally representative sample. The research provides insight into technology budgets; investment priorities; business and technology challenges; as well as on some specific topics, e.g., NDC, disruption, modern retailing.

Why did Amadeus undertake this study?

This study is one of many ways that we gain an understanding of our different customer groups’ priorities, and how they are looking to use technology to address travellers’ needs. This, in turn, helps Amadeus to develop innovative products and services to meet the industry’s current and future needs.  We are also aware of the considerable change across the industry, e.g., Modern Retailing in the airline industry, transformation of the way airports operate, and new protocols in travel distribution. In this context, we hope this study helps travel companies benchmark their own plans against an average of their peers. To the best of our knowledge, this is the only research project that benchmarks the technology investment priorities of such a broad set of sub-sectors of the travel industry.

What are the key findings?

The study contains a wealth of insight into the plans of airlines, airports, travel sellers (retail, business, online), corporations, hospitality companies and travel payments departments. We plan to release individual reports on the key findings for each area mentioned above throughout the first half of 2024.

Across the industry for the areas mentioned below, our study shows investment in technology is expected to increase by 14 per cent on average this year, compared to last year.

ChatGPT burst on to the world stage less than 18 months (about one and a half years) ago (November 2022) and it quickly won the people’s hearts and minds. Amadeus was already using Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence, but now the world’s focus has been put on advances like Generative AI, we can also see why Machine Learning is expected to be the most important technology this year and will remain so in five years of time. Although Generative AI is not among the top technology for this year, it will rise to second position in 2029.

How will Amadeus act on the findings of this research?

Our product development and product marketing teams are keenly interested in the priorities of our customers. We believe, it is important for technology companies to adopt an outside-in approach. That means using research such as this and customer insights to steer the development of new solutions. In fact, we see our work with driving customers on new solutions as a very collaborative process.