Philippine Newsletter
PTAA Automation Mart Issue > 2009
Bulletin
Philippine Mosaic
Prescriptions for success
during challenging times
By Albert Villadolid
Amadeus Philippines
General Manager
Confronted with a global crisis,
the task of business leaders
and managers is to steer their
organizations to safer grounds,
search for opportunities in blue
oceans and make sure that their
businesses remain viable.
Leaders of the travel and tourism
industry have the unenviable and
very challenging tasks of doing
these things to an industry facing a
major and global downturn.
In the Philippine setting, our
industry is faced with a flurry of
news and developments, both good
and bad. We need not enumerate
these good news/ bad news as they
are known to us as we read, hear,
see, and experience them almost
on a daily basis.
What is clear is that if we take
stock of all these news, we can
continue to sum up our situation
with this single unbroken sentence:
“THEOPPORTUNITYISNOWHERE!”
Amadeus advises travel agencies to
explore new alliances, sales channels
Amadeus cited four key areas Philippine travel agencies needed for them to
stay ahead in the business.
Amadeus Vice President for Solutions in the Asia Pacific Peter Smith said travel
agencies should have cost and efficiency awareness, establish airline alliances,
compete with online channels, and strengthen industry cooperation.
“In addition to their partnerships with national and full service carriers, travel
agencies can work with low cost carriers and secondary carriers to package
and offer value deals to regional destinations,” Smith said.
page 2
According to Smith, low cost carriers have been the catalyst
How do you read this? Do you read
it as: “THE OPPORTUNITY IS NO
WHERE!” or “THE OPPORTUNITY IS
NOW HERE!”
Each one can make a choice, but
to those who love our industry, the
choice should be very clear: “THE
OPPORTUNITY IS NOW HERE!”
Allow me now to spell out a few
industry prescriptions so that we
can make sure that the opportunity
is now here.
GET OUR INDUSTRY
TO WORK TOGETHER
Now, more than ever, our
industry needs to act together on
a number of important issues and
opportunities. Let me list a few of
these that should be on top of our
agenda.
First, we need to work together to
implement the New Tourism Law
page 2
which can
News
From Page 1
Prescriptions...
help our industry address deficiencies
in our tourism-related infrastructure
and where we can promote the bright
opportunities in our industry: medical/
dental tourism, real estate tourism,
retirement travel, recreation and ecotourism.
Second, the industry must work
together to get a big share of the P330
billion funds the national government
plans to spend to pump-priming our
economy.
Third, we need to formulate new
marketing tools to entice our customers
and countrymen to travel and spend.
Bear in mind that despite the crisis,
OFW remittances are still growing. This
year alone, remittances are expected to
amount to nearly P1 trillion.
RE-SKILL AND UP-SKILL OUR
INDUSTRY WORKFORCE
As the industry landscape changes
due to the socio-economic forces, the
call to re-skill our workforce is now
more urgent.
From Page 1
The staff training that we have been
deferring should now take priority so
that our organizations can handle the
increasing complexities of business.
Our staff must also learn new skills
such as how to market and service more
demanding and new generations of
internet-savvy customers who exhibit
different customer behaviors.
Along this line, the Amadeus Corporate
University can be an industry partner in
addressing these skills gaps.
RE-TOOL, RE-DESIGN, REORCHESTRATE YOUR BUSINESS
In a recent survey of the Management
Association of the Philippines, one of the
top cost saving measures listed by its
members to improve their productivity
was business process re-engineering.
It involves the three Rs: Re-tool (use of
new tools and technologies); Re-design
(improve our processes and procedures
to be more efficient and effective) and
Re-orchestrate (run the business with
different partners, business models and
systems).
Amadeus advises...
of change in the airline industry which suddenly became
driven by cost and business necessities brought about by
the international financial crisis.
Moreover, Smith said local travel agencies would also be
helping themselves by working together.
“If travel agencies work together with tourism bodies,
industry associations, and government organisations, they
can create attractive joint-promotions and packages that
will boost travel volumes in the Philippines and create
more business for everyone,” Smith said.
Smith also said Amadeus can provide travel agencies
with the tools to compete with the current trend of
airlines going online and having a direct channel to their
customers.
“We are currently helping travel agencies of all sizes build
their online business with the Amadeus Agency Internet
Engine. The solution enables travel agencies to develop an
effective website that will allow customers to search and
book flights and hotels among others” Smith said.
Smith said Amadeus has made a long term commitment
to provide low cost internet solutions and technical
capabilities to travel agencies
2The Philippine Mosaic
Do not forget to check out the plethora
of Amadeus solutions and technologies
and our Amadeus Travel Technology
Innovation Center that can help your
firm pursue these three Rs.
In summary, if there are two things we
must learn from the current crisis, these
are: First, we must not put to waste
the current crisis because it presents
opportunities amidst the dangers it
brings; and Second, remember what
economic history has been telling us
from the past crisis that we had hurdled
- it is during the crisis when the next
upswing commences.
Albert T. Villadolid is a member of the
Management Association of the Philippines
and the European Chamber of Commerce of
the Philippines. He is the General Manager
of Amadeus Philippines.
He is also one of the first Professional
Industrial Engineers in the Philippines, and
teaches Strategic Information Systems
Planning at De La Salle Professional Schools.
Ramon V. del Rosario Sr. Graduate School of
Business.
Mr. Villadolid can be reached at albert.
villadolid@amadeus.com.
Amadeus Hotel Store to be launched in the Philippines
Amadeus is partnering with
Transhotel, a global consolidator of
hotels and services, in the launching
this September of its new Amadeus
Hotel Store solution in the country.
Under the agreement, Transhotel
will work closely with Amadeus in
providing local travel agencies with
access to its database.
The Amadeus Hotel Store will provide
seamless access to Transhotel’s inventory
of 50,000 hotels and will ensure upfront
payment of commissions for bookings
coursedthroughit.
“We are excited to partner with
Transhotel in providing travel agencies
withaccesstoagreaternumberofhotels
and more commissionable content in
ournewconsolidatorproduct.Bysigning
agreements with hotel consolidators
we are able to make a number of
independent hotels available to travel
agents,” Amadeus Vice President for
Marketing IanWheeler said.
Grupo Transhotel Chief Executive
Officer Julio de la Cruz said the
partnership is a key milestone for the
company which has been continuously
providing travel agencies access to hotel
services worldwide.
“We are delighted to offer even more
travel agents access to our numerous
branded and independent properties in
all price ranges,”de la Cruz said.
Transhotel is one of the world’s
leaders in the travel industry with 26
international sales offices, a portfolio
of over 50,000 hotels, and with 75,000
travel agency clients worldwide.
News
Amadeus takes lead
in use of mobile
phone technology
Amadeus recently unveiled the latest version
of its SMS Solution for travel agents which now
comes armed with global coverage.
Amadeus Asia Pacific’s Business Solutions
Group director Olivier Froger said the upgraded
technology will now allow travel agencies to
send information to their clients anywhere in
the world.
“Today’s traveller is concerned with
convenience. They use their mobile phone
to manage multiple tasks because it offers
an immediate and interactive channel of
communication as well as global access to
contacts and information,” Froger said.
He added: “The Amadeus SMS solution allows
travel agencies to communicate via the mobile
phone which is time saving and non-intrusive for
customers, and cost-saving for the travel agent.”
The new version, developed by the Amadeus
Asia Pacific Region team, was first introduced
in 2008 as an industry-first web-based tool for
travel agents. It has since been well-received
and successfully used in Australia, Hong Kong,
Malaysia, Philippines, and Thailand.
The new SMS Solution version is now fully
integrated into the Amadeus Selling Platform,
allowing travel agents to quickly generate
traveller data including information on flight
changes and confirmations, warnings about
time limits on bookings, as well as e-ticketing
and insurance directly from the Amadeus PNR
database.
Froger said the SMS Solution is very relevant to
how the Asia Pacific region has adapted towards
the mobile phone technology and has made
them take an initiative towards developing more
mobile content.
Amadeus partners
with leading
Philippine schools
Amadeus
has
aggressively partnered
with some of the leading
colleges and universities
in the country in a bid to
improve the local travel
and tourism industry.
In a short span of time,
Amadeus Philippines has
entered into agreements
with six universities and
colleges including De La
Salle–College of Saint
Benilde, Far Eastern
University,
Lyceum
of the Philippines
University, San Sebastian
Far Eastern University
tourism industry.
“We expect our
partnerships with some
of the country’s leading
schools to create a steady
pool of globally certified
travel
professionals,
trained in using the most
widely deployed travel
San Sebastian College
College, University of global distribution system
the Philippines, and in the world,” Villadolid
University of San Jose said.
The
Amadeus
Recoletos.
platform
is
the
most
Under its agreements,
Amadeus Philippines widely used integrated
by
travel
will be providing all its system
agencies,
airlines,
partner schools with
its wide range of elearning courses which
will provide training for
college students on the
intricacies of the travel
and tourism industry.
Amadeus Philippines
General Manager Albert
Villadolid expects the
partnerships to provide
a boost to the manpower
needs of the travel and Enderun Colleges
hotels, cruise liners, car
rental companies, and
insurance firms.
Meanwhile, Enderun
Colleges, the Philippine
affiliate of Les Roches
International School of
Hotel Management in
Switzerland and the Alain
Ducasse Formation in
France, also entered into a
partnership with Amadeus
Philippines for the training
of its students on the use
of the Amadeus Property
Management
System
(PMS).
The Amadeus PMS
is directly linked to
the Amadeus Global
Distribution System and
includes its inter-hotel
chain communication
capability and email
confirmation facility.
The Philippine Mosaic 3
New partnerships
North Star renews partnership,
Triple Eight shifts to Amadeus
North Star International
Travel Inc., one of the leading
marine and corporate travel
agencies in the country
extended its contract with
Amadeus for an additional
three years.
“We have decided to renew
our contract because Amadeus
has consistently provided
us with travel content and
IT solutions that allow us to
operate at peak performance
levels,” North Star International
Travel Inc. President Norma
Cacho said.
North
Star’s
travel
expertise ranges from the
swift deployment of Filipino
seafarers, assembly of complex
corporate travel itineraries, and
creation of unique leisure travel
packages.
Meanwhile, Triple
Eight
International Travel & Tours Inc.,
one of the country’s leading
wholesale travel agencies also
shifted to Amadeus.
“With the very broad
content and solutions that are
available in Amadeus and with
their state-of-the-art support
infrastructure, our agency will
be able to offer our customers
a much wider range of choices,”
Triple Eight International Travel
& Tours Inc. General Manager
Myrna Tee said.
As a wholesaler, Triple Eight
caters mainly to non-IATA travel
agencies by providing them
with airline ticketing fulfillment
services. It also services
corporate clients that benefit
from the agency’s negotiated
rates with airlines, hotels, travel
insurance, car rentals, and other
travel-related providers.
Mango Tours upgrades to Moneydirect
Amadeus Philippines
upgraded the online
payment schemes of
Mango Tours and Travel
Inc.,a travel consolidator
specializing
in
Philippine and Asian
destinations, through its
Moneydirect platform.
The
partnership
enabled
Mango
Tours and Travel Inc.,
an International Air
Transport Association
member, to make and
receive online payments,
to and from suppliers
and sub-agents that
are co-members of
the
Moneydirect
community.
Mango Tours and
Travel Inc. General
Manager Earl Francisco
said Moneydirect has
enabled them to run
their operations more
efficiently.
“Since
signing
with
Moneydirect,
we have experienced
convenience,
time-
savings, and most
importantly,
the
security of conducting
online payments and
collections from the
comfort of our own
office,” Francisco said.
Launched in 2005
with Banco De Oro
as an inline partner,
Moneydirect has over
300 Philippine-based
subscribers
which
utilize the platform
to streamline their
respective electronic
fund
transfer
processes.
Amadeus
is the clear
leader in the
Asia Pacific
region
Amadeus
posted
strong numbers across
the board in the Asia
Pacific region during the
first quarter of the year.
Amadeus
Asia
Pacific
President
David Brett attributed
the performance of
the company to the
soundness
of
the
economies in the region.
“The travel industry in
Asia Pacific has proven in
the past to be extremely
resilient,recovering quickly
through crisis such as the
SARS epidemic and natural
disasters.
Companies
are also increasingly
recognising the important
role of technology in
improving efficiency, and
profitability,”Brett said.
During the first three
months of the year,
Amadeus expanded its
market share by 2.10
percent to reach 32.80
percent,effectively making
it the number one Global
Distribution System (GDS)
in the region.
Amadeus Asia Pacific
also processed more than
40 percent of all the online
bookings in the region to
make it the clear leader in
the market.
Amadeus Asia Pacific
has offices in 39 countries
and territories in the region.
The company has more
than 19,500 travel agency
customers, 92 airlines, and
almost 200 hotel partners
in Asia Pacific.
www.ph.amadeus.com