Francisco Pérez-Lozao Rüter at the Amadeus Rail Forum

We have been investing in new businesses for quite a while. What we are trying to do now is to reinvigorate and focus on things we have been doing in the past in a much better, more focused way, probably putting more investment to work, being more specific about what we want to do, more performance-driven, and better in execution and strategy definition. We have selected a specific set of areas: hotels, which we've been doing in the past, and we believe we are on the right track. Rail is a second area, then airports, and three transversal areas: business intelligence, payments, and new media. New media is a placeholder for activities like a mobile platform, digital advertising, user-generated content, and engaging with new media players interested in travel services that require specific engagement due to different business models.

This is a marathon run; we have done at best the first few kilometers. We are concentrating on creating the first GDS for rail. Up until now, the rail distribution model has been national distribution on their own systems. We are trying to create the first GDS, so a lot of investment is going into the rail distribution platform, which we label RDP. We are hooking up different rail providers to the back end of that platform. We have selected the ones we consider bringing critical mass: SNCF, Deutsche Bahn, Trenitalia, etc., primarily European players today, but hopefully outside Europe tomorrow. We are focusing on hooking them up to the platform, first commercially but also technically, as it is quite an undertaking to integrate them. That's what we are absolutely concentrated on now. The idea is to bring them through the Amadeus indirect channel. Today, we are talking about indirect distribution of railway companies. Tomorrow, once we have more or less done that, we would like to engage with railway companies about their indirect distribution, helping them be better or outsourcing some e-commerce activities. Why shouldn't they talk to us like airlines do? We have a lot to offer. But today, it is about indirect distribution through channels: corporate, TMC to corporate, online travel agencies with air-rail display – it's a B2B proposition.

Customer centricity is about understanding the customer better, from the start to the end of the travel service. It involves understanding his needs, how to inspire him, how to influence the inspirational process to purchase, and going with the customer through the whole chain without losing him up to the end of the trip and post-trip wrap-up. Ideally, you would never lose track of your customer and feed relevant information to different players so they can take care of the traveler. This is a vision, but it's doable and technically solvable. Amadeus is in a unique position because we sit with indirect players, provide technology to airports and airlines, and with critical mass in hotels and railways, we can create these businesses in synergy with the ecosystem. The technological platforms and customer know-how should be a single consistent instance. This is transformational, and Amadeus has the chance to do it due to its footprint in different service areas, unlike Google which comes from the end-user view, while Amadeus comes from the B2B infrastructure.