Booking Boss, an all inclusive booking system for tour, activity and attraction operators, has joined Amadeus Next. Booking Boss is an Australia based startup that also emerged as the Travel Innovator of the year at the Phocuswright Conference 2014. Last year, they closed a USD 2 million Series A funding round.

To achieve the goal of transforming the travel activity sector all over the world, Booking Boss has joined Amadeus Next community. With this new association, Booking Boss will have access to Amadeus’ technology and with the wide reach of the global travel brand, the startup will also have reach to the global network. This would allow Booking Boss to be more visible across the APAC region and explore new possibilities in the region.

Booking Boss was launched in 2013 by Renee Welsh and Andy Welsh, a couple with more than two decades of experience between them in travel industry. Commenting on this new development, Booking Boss CEO, Renee Welsh said,

“The most exciting thing is the ability for us to access world class technology and connectivity from one of the travel tech greats – Amadeus”

“We joined because this opportunity provides us with direct insight and mentoring from one of the largest and most successful travel technology organisations in the world. It’s the perfect platform for support, insight and to be connected with Amadeus and its customer base,’ added Renee.

Discussing the significance of a platform like Booking Boss in the activity space, Simon Akeroyd, VP, Corporate Strategy, Amadeus Asia Pacific said,

“Tours and Activities represents a huge portion of the travel industry but traditionally bookings have been fragmented and mainly offline. Booking Boss offers a great platform which helps bring the offer online, allows providers to tap into new customer bases and manage their bookings in a more efficient way. We’re proud to support them through Amadeus Next and offer our technology, expertise and customer network so they can grow their business.”

Booking Boss will be joining many other promising travel startups that are a part of Amadeus Next. To know more about Amadeus Next, read our interview with Bart Bellers. Senior Advisor, Corporate Strategy, Amadeus Asia Pacific.

If you think you have a product that deserves to be a part of Amadeus Next, sign up for Startup Knockdown+. Amadeus will choose the most promising startup from the participants to be a part of Amadeus Next.

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Agnitio Consulting LLP, a leading New Delhi based travel, tourism and hospitality advisory firm, has inked a landmark agreement with Amadeus, the leading provider of technology solutions for the global travel industry for Amadeus Next. The objective of Amadeus Next is to nurture a community of young innovative startups in travel and connect the key players in travel to shape the future of the industry.

With its strong understanding of the travel industry and experience of working with startups, Agnitio shares a vision similar to Amadeus Next and has the potential to make significant contribution to the community. That is why the two companies have decided to work together towards growing Amadeus Next.

Highlighting the importance of associations like this, Simon Akeroyd, VP, Corporate Strategy, Amadeus Asia Pacific commented, “Partners are a crucial element of the Amadeus Next community. They extend the knowledge and technology beyond what Amadeus already offers, and provide start-ups with access to expertise, software, connections or even funding which they couldn’t otherwise access. Agnitio Consulting’s network and strong relationships with the Indian travel and tourism industry, will help Amadeus Next start-ups based in India, or looking to expand into the Indian market, to make their business model a success.”

Agnitio works with startups to identify the gaps in their processes, optimise services, open new channels, coach leadership and help raise funds. They also have strategic partnerships in place with leading industry associations that can significantly help the startups that are a part of Next. Amadeus mentors the startups that are a part of the Next family and Agnitio can play a part and help them achieve their business objectives. The association will also enable for the startups to leverage the strong network and reach of Agnitio to drive alliances with key stakeholders in the industry.

Talking about how Agnitio Consulting was intending to proceed, the Managing Partner, Mr. Ashish Kumar said, “We shall support Amadeus Next to reach out to potential startups through our strategic partners, with guidance and mentoring of selected start-ups. We will support start-ups by connecting them with existing industry players and associations. We will work closely with the Amadeus technology team around user requirements, web services / APIs. Most importantly, we shall also help startups in product ideation, conceptualisation and the realisation of their product roadmap or vision.”

Audio Compass, Tripoto, TripHobo, ConfirmTkt and Rimoto are some of the startups that are a part of Amadeus Next. Audio Compass joined recently after winning the Amadeus Next award during Phocuswright India. ConfirmTkt joined after emerging as the winner of Startup Knockdown Delhi.

Amadeus Next and Agnitio have also extended their support for the upcoming Travel Startup Knockdown+. You can find more details and register for the event at startupknockdown.travhq.com.

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Amadeus umbrellas yet another start-up named Crayon Data, Asia’s fastest growing big data companies under their travel technology start-up community, Amadeus Next. Amadeus Next, the community was created to mentor, nurture and partner with start-ups, and to evolve new and original ideas in travel, and support go-to-market efforts.

Amadeus is a leading provider of advanced technology solutions for the global travel industry. Customer groups include travel providers (e.g. airlines, hotels, rail and ferry operators, etc.), travel sellers (travel agencies and websites), and travel buyers (corporations and travel management companies).

Crayon, with its growing presence in various geographies, will benefit from Amadeus’ global reach allowing Crayon Data to expand its services to a global audience. The travel industry is changing rapidly, enormously and fundamentally.  Digital channels are the primary source of inspiration and planning, and remain a critical part of the entire journey. Personalisation now means profit.

Based in Singapore, Crayon Data is a big data start-up where its flagship product Maya is a personalization engine that facilitates choice delivery for the banking, hotel and digital media verticals.

Maya is built on Crayon Data’s proprietary platform, Simpler Choices, which empowers enterprises with the ability to deliver ultra-personalized choices to their consumers. It does this by creating a consumer taste fabric, using over 14 recommender systems and proprietary cognitive thinking TasteGraph algorithms to work on vast internal and external data sets.

Speaking on the partnership with Amadeus Next, Srikant Sastri, co-founder of Crayon Data, said, “Crayon Data is thrilled to be part of Amadeus Next. We look forward to working with Amadeus and benefiting from its vast knowledge base, eco-system and reach within the  travel and hospitality industry, to develop cutting edge solutions and take them to market. This will change the future landscape of travel.”

With Crayon’s Maya, hotels and OTAs now have an opportunity to build trail-blazing, mobile first, curated travel experiences that can deliver personalised itineraries, from choice-to-commerce. Maya personalises engagement right through a customer’s ‘decision-making journey’. Crayon’s unique proposition has resulted in multiple clients across international markets, in the past year alone.

Speaking on Crayon’s innovations, Bart Bellers, Senior Advisor, Corporate Strategy at, Amadeus Asia Pacific, said, “What we like about Crayon Data is that they’re solving personalisation at the other end of the spectrum. Instead of trying to map a traveller’s personality, Crayon Data brings meaningful insights to travellers about the atmosphere of hotels and restaurants by building taste graphs of each and every property. Amadeus Next is very excited to have them on board and we look forward to supporting their growth with Amadeus’ technology, expertise and customer reach.”

Crayon, a portfolio company of Jungle Ventures, has been accredited as one of the most successful and innovative big data start-ups in 2014 and 2015, by global platforms such as TiEcon, CEBIT, IBM Watson, Intech50 and OrangeFab. Other travel technology start-ups on board Amadeus Next include Booking Boss, Klook, Orahi, Triposo, TopDocs, TripVerse, TakeMe Tour, Seatfrog, ConfirmTkt,TraveLibro, Tripoto StayAngel, dozo!, TripHobo and PredictHQ.

We recently got a chance to catch up with Simon Akeroyd, VP, Corporate Strategy and Business Development, Amadeus Asia Pacific during Phocuswright India to learn more about Amadeus Next. You can find the interview story here.

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During the recently concluded Phocuswright India, 10 innovators took the stage and each one of them had the potential to change the way we travel. Over the past few years, Asia-Pacific region has been home to many such innovative startups and last year, Amadeus introduced Amadeus Next to help the growth of these young startups. Through Amadeus Next, they collaborate with these startups to evolve new ideas in travel by leveraging Amadeus’ technology expertise and customer reach.

Simon Akeroyd, VP, Corporate Strategy and Business Development, Amadeus Asia Pacific

Simon Akeroyd, VP, Corporate Strategy and Business Development at Amadeus Asia Pacific has been driving the Amadeus Next initiative ever since it came into existence. We got a chance to speak with him during Phocuswright India to learn more about ‘Next’ and the potential it holds. Here is an edited excerpt from the conversation:

How do you think the startup ecosystem in APAC differs from that of the west?

The startups in this region and other parts of the world are in very different stages. In US and Europe, there are more barriers for them due to the dependency on legacy systems. However, in Asia, we have seen that many startups start from scratch as there isn’t so much historical legacy system to build on top of. I see the young companies in Asia-Pacific being able to grow much faster than in other regions.

Talking about the trends, many of the initiatives that we see in Asia are similar to the ones we see elsewhere. It is just that the chances of successful execution are higher here than the other regions.

What was the idea behind Amadeus Next?

The intention is to improve the way we, as Amadeus, work with smaller companies. In the case of Amadeus Next, these smaller companies are travel startups but we have some other initiatives as well which are with more mature companies.

We feel that Amadeus is across the entire travel chain and we power travel, something that we are really proud of. We have to be able to participate where activities are happening in the travel space. To achieve that, we have to shift from being an internally focussed IT company and open up to innovations and enhance them. That is why we started Amadeus Next.

Why the focus on APAC region?

We decided to focus on APAC partly because of some of the reasons I mentioned earlier, being able to move quickly and being responsive. Another reason is that we noticed the innovators in Asia are hungry and excited for being able to make a change and for us that is a very positive factor.

Operating Amadeus Next like a startup, what have been the learnings so far?

We have learned a lot since we launched Amadeus Next last year. When we launched and decided to work with startups, we thought the biggest challenge would be money. We were under the impression that they would all expect us to help them raise funds, however, we learned that it is not about the funding. Obviously it isn’t easy for startups to attract investors and raise funds but that wasn’t their prime focus. Their focus was on getting access to customers and improving their technology. So, quite quickly, we learned that for startups, it is more about how we can open up our technology for them and bring our customers to them.

There are also some takeaways for Amadeus among which the big one is “Get out of the building”. In large corporations, there is a tendency to spend a lot of time debating amongst a closed group about what is right, what people want and you end up wasting a lot of time that way. For Amadeus, the learning is to get out of the building, ask the consumers and stop debating internally if they want blue or red. So one of the benefits of the program is that we improve as a company and learn to be closer to the market.

What is next for Amadeus Next?

There are two major trends that we see in the travel space. The first one, sharing economy is already impacting us significantly and is shifting towards access economy. During the Travel Innovation Summit, Myles cars talked about reducing redundant inventory for cars. In Amadeus Next we have Orahi, which is a carpooling service and I think that kind of shared economy, which is already here and is growing very fast, is going to be a major interest area for us.

On the other side of it, there is the Internet of Things, pretty important but less well defined than the first one. We don’t know yet where it will end up. The impact of wearables on travel is very hard to guess. We are good at some parts of Internet of Things but there is still a lot to be learned in that space and it will be a massive change for us.

Audio Compass won the Amadeus Next award during Travel Innovation Summit at Phocuswright India. You can find more details about Amadeus Next and the startups that are a part of it at next.amadeus.com.

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