Amadeus IT Group, S.A. (/ˌæməˈdeɪəs aɪ ˈtiː/) is a Spanish multinational technology company that provides software for the global travel and tourism industry. The parent company of Amadeus IT Group, holding over 99.7% of the firm, is Amadeus IT Holding S.A. It was listed on the Spanish stock exchanges on 29 April 2010.[6]
Amadeus has central sites in Madrid, Spain (corporate headquarters and marketing), Sophia Antipolis, France (product development), London, UK (product development), Breda, Netherlands (development), Erding, Germany (Data center) and Bangalore, India (product development) as well as regional offices in Bangkok, Buenos Aires, Dubai, Miami, Istanbul, Singapore, and Sydney.[7][8] At market level, Amadeus maintains customer operations through 173 local Amadeus Commercial Organisations (ACOs) covering 195 countries. The Amadeus group employs 21,500 employees worldwide,[9] and listed in Forbes‘ list of “The World’s Largest Public Companies” as No. 985.[10]
History
Since 2004, the company has invested €1 billion in R&D.[11] In 2005, Amadeus was delisted from the Paris, Frankfurt and Madrid stock exchanges when BC Partners and Cinven bought their stake from three of the four founding airlines and the rest of the capital floated from institutional and minority shareholders. The transition from distribution system to technology provider was reflected by the change in its corporate name to Amadeus IT Group in 2006. In 2009, Amadeus invested about €257 million in R&D.[12][non-primary source needed]
In September 2014, Air France sold a 3% stake in the firm for $438 million.[13] In November 2017, Amadeus invested in global mapping tech provider AVUXI.[14]
Vulnerability discovered
On 15 January 2019, the hacker and activist Noam Rotem discovered a major vulnerability affecting nearly half of all airlines worldwide. While booking a flight with Israeli national carrier El Al, he came across a significant security breach that allows anyone to access and change private information on flight bookings. The same breach was then discovered to include 44% of the international carriers market, potentially affecting tens of millions of travelers.[15]
Contribution to open source
According to a May 2015 investigation, Amadeus has contributed to the Docker open source software project.[16]
Business model and other business lines
In 2000, Amadeus was awarded the development of two new operational applications for British Airways and Qantas: the inventory management and the departure control systems.[17] These products were outside of the core expertise domain of Amadeus and were built with the expertise of the airlines.
References
- ^ “William Connelly”. corporate.amadeus.com. Retrieved 15 March 2025.
- ^ a b c “Amadeus FY2024 global report”. Amadeus.
- ^ “Amadeus Global Report 2021” (PDF). Amadeus. p. 76.
- ^ “Amadeus completes acquisition of Vision-Box”. Vision-Box. 8 April 2024. Retrieved 15 March 2025.
- ^ “Amadeus completes acquisition of Navitaire”. corporate.amadeus.com (Press release). Retrieved 26 May 2025.
- ^ “CNMV – Folletos de emisión y OPVs”. Cnmv.es. 14 April 2010.
- ^ “Worldwide offices”.
- ^ Joseph, Steve (5 July 2012). “Amadeus offices around the world”. Amadeus.
- ^ Global Report 2024 (PDF) (Report). Amadeus.
- ^ “The World’s Largest Public Companies List”. Forbes. Archived from the original on 23 April 2011.
- ^ “Amadeus announces 2009 financial performance”. Breaking Travel News. 24 March 2010.
- ^ “Amadeus demonstrates resilience with solid 2009 performance and strong second half growth despite challenging travel industry conditions” (Press release). Cision. 23 March 2010.
- ^ Huet, Natalie (10 September 2014). “Air France to reap 339 million euros in cash from Amadeus shares”. Reuters.
- ^ “Amadeus Ventures invests in global mapping tech provider AVUXI”. Northstar Travel Group. 9 November 2017.
- ^ Whittaker, Zack (15 January 2019). “Flaws in Amadeus’ airline booking system made it easy to change passenger records”. TechCrunch.
- ^ Yegulalp, Serdar (27 February 2015). “Look who’s helping build Docker — besides Docker itself”. InfoWorld.
- ^ TPF Scoop Archives Archived 3 March 2016 at the Wayback Machine. Blackbeard.com. Retrieved on 20 August 2013.