With 70 per cent of the world’s population expected to live in cities by 2050 – a substantial increase from 55 per cent today – cities around the world are looking to maximize the use of their resources with artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things (IoT) and other technologies.

Today Amadeus announces the creation of a taskforce dedicated to leading its new Smart Cities offer in Asia Pacific, enabling Smart Mobility for the world’s most densely populated cities and changing the way we will live and travel in the future.

Smart Mobility, how people travel into and move around a city, is integral to governments’ plans worldwide to develop their urban spaces into Smart Cities in order to bring greater efficiency as we grow into a larger, more interconnected world.

Spanning the breadth of the travel industry, Amadeus is uniquely positioned to be at the heart of the development of Smart Cities. Amadeus’ offer will leverage the company’s IT backbone to enable true mobility across the entire travel journey, creating seamless door-to-door travel experiences. Led by Simon Akeroyd, Vice President, Corporate Strategy and Business Development, Asia Pacific at Amadeus, the Smart Cities offer will help cities best use existing infrastructure and new technology in order to improve tourism as well as residents’ daily commutes.

“As urbanization increases and governments are faced with challenges around traffic congestion, pollution, inadequate energy and resources, it will be vital for cities to harness technologies to solve complex problems,” says Akeroyd. “The future of travel will be driven by multi-modal journeys and data to deliver more personalized and smart experiences. The rise of Smart Cities will boost travel and tourism, and so the public and private sector must collaborate to share data and use technology. When done successfully, we believe that this will enable the immersive travel experiences and services that citizens and travelers expect in the future.”

Amadeus will collaborate with the public sector and governments to deliver solutions that enable the Smart Cities of the future. In 2017, Amadeus committed US$800 million to research and development for innovation globally, half of which was directly linked to technologies that furthered its Smart Mobility initiatives – including biometrics, traveler identification, IoT, massive data platforms and passenger handling solutions. In addition to this investment and to further its commitment to Smart Cities, 2016 and 2017 saw Amadeus invest a total of US$1.5 billion across strategic focus areas including Airport IT and Hotel IT through acquisitions.

Asia is a strategic focus for Amadeus’ Smart Cities solution, given 22 of the 39 megacities worldwide are in Asia Pacific, and 11 alone are in China. Additionally, Asia’s large population and emerging middle class means the next billion Asian travelers are just around the corner, with half of global air passenger traffic expected to come from Asia by 2030.

Amadeus is currently working on a number of key projects in Asia Pacific that support Asia’s Smart Cities’ initiatives. Some of these include:

• Smart Tourism – Amadeus is working closely with National Tourism Boards in Asia to help cities attract more inbound travelers and have a better understanding around their preferences. This is done through both Travel Intelligence and Digital Advertising, using big data to help cities make better decisions.
• Hong Kong International Airport (HKIA) and Amadeus worked together to deploy the world’s first hot-swappable battery powered movable check-in kiosks, called iCUSS, with both a self-service and full-service mode, reinventing the entire check-in experience. The versatile cloud-based mobile kiosks are powered by Amadeus’ common use technology and can be rapidly deployed and relocated for use by the traveler to check-in themselves or by the airport staff to provide full-service operations. The airport can now say goodbye to different systems and fixed locations, meaning greater freedom and flexibility to serve passengers throughout their journey to and around the airport.

Amadeus’ new Smart Cities taskforce builds on existing mobility projects across Amadeus’ global business. One example is the European Union (EU)’s ‘The Shift to Rail (S2R) Innovation Program 4,’ which uses Amadeus’ IT solutions to deliver fully integrated, multimodal passenger services for long and short trips in Europe. Another example of innovation in this field from Amadeus’ Airlines team is a partnership with Lufthansa, where the airline is using Amadeus’ facial recognition technology to vastly reduce passenger boarding times at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX).

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Simon Akeroyd, VP, Corporate Strategy & Business Development, Amadeus Asia Pacific has penned this piece for aspiring travel startup entrepreneurs.

There’s no doubting that the world of business is changing. The traditional model of large international corporates functioning in a singular, closed-door fashion is fast disappearing, with companies now open to collaboration or outsourcing. While previously big corporates, protected by expensive barriers of entry, were responsible for all “business problems” in-house, technology has now made it possible for many of these issues to be outsourced.

And here lies the opportunity for the B2B entrepreneur. The last few years have seen an unprecedented rise in the number of startups globally, not least Asia where there are over 47,000 startup companies listed on angel.co. Often seen as polar opposites with differing goals and priorities, many large corporates and disruptive startups are now finding they can benefit one another. Startups are capitalising on the fact that big businesses need them, they are working to tackle business problems outside the larger company’s domain, with the outside chance of finding themselves targets for acquisition by the very companies they are trouble shooting for.

In fact, even if a trade exit doesn’t materialise, there are still plenty of compelling reasons for startups to partner with corporates. For one, working alongside a trusted corporation provides startups with credibility in an often-crowded marketplace. With an established corporation as a partner or key customer, the startup is well-placed to be taken seriously by their peers. Secondly, by working alongside larger, more established companies, startups can piggyback off robust marketing and PR strategies that may save them from falling foul of any crises that can often plague new companies. Finally, the scale of a large organisation provides a startup with strong distribution channels, significantly improving the situation of the startup, whilst also reducing the overall risk.

Simon in a tuk tuk in Sri Lanka Image Credits: Amadeus Blog

So how should you go about founding a successful startup?

Three steps to startup success:

1. Identify the problem you want to solve.

For large travel companies (including Amadeus), there’s always a long list of problems or challenges, of varying levels of priorities, which we’d love to focus on. However, more often than not, there isn’t the time or the resources to look at them all. Most companies have limited capacity to implement every change and advancement that they want to; there are always projects that get pushed down the to-do list. It’s those non-urgent tasks that could be the real sweet spot for a startup, a great advantage for the budding entrepreneur. Rather than the stress of worrying about sales figures (which should generally be consistent), or spending time marketing to attract new customers, the startup can instead focus on serving that one customer with that one product.

2. Do your research.

Familiarize yourself with the industry, assess the work of competitors and keep an eye on what technologies and innovations are coming next. Take a hotel, for example. Maybe they want to cut their laundry bill or determine how rooms can be cleaned in a more efficient way to offer early check-ins, accommodate late check-outs, offer an amazing guest experience and drive loyalty. It could even be how to improve internal efficiencies or manage their supply chain better. If a startup can offer a solution to these types of problems, they become a valuable match for any corporation and far more likely to succeed.

3. Choose the right support.

With the number of accelerator programmes multiplying throughout the region, it can be difficult to determine which is the best fit for you and your partner. It is vital that you find the right experts to partner with in order to have the best chance of success. Not an accelerator or an incubator, Amadeus Next is a community, nimble and flexible, just like a startup itself, which leverages the technology and expertise of our experts to provide support to travel technology startups. We currently partner with more than 30 startups, and surprisingly over 70% of these companies have some form of B2B (business-to-business) component, with almost 55% being purely B2B.

Why B2B?

Founding a B2C startup is undoubtedly an attractive idea. Many entrepreneurs dream of creating a company with mass appeal. The next Airbnb, Line or Grab perhaps. However, these ‘unicorn’ triumphs are rare (hence the name), and in my opinion, entrepreneurs would be wise to consider an alternative route on their quest for startup success. While it is true that some B2C startups bring great ideas, technology, and solutions to the travel industry, for many it can be very difficult to get off the ground, particularly for first-time entrepreneurs. From the get-go, B2C startups must be alert to many things, including having a strong marketing strategy in place that stands up against the big names already dominating the B2C travel industry. You have to compete for a potential travellers’ attention against the massive marketing budgets, years of brand exposure and known services of the likes of TripAdvisor, MakeMyTrip, Expedia or Ctrip, amongst others. Most well established travel brands have a solid funnel of customers and it’s hard to take those customers (and their loyalty) away.

The reality is that many B2C startups we see aren’t favourable to investors, many of whom prefer to fund B2B businesses in a bid to establish more stable earnings. It may sound glamorous to launch a B2C startup, but according to CB insights, in 2016 there were only 25 unicorn “births” globally, 68% less than in 2015[1].

So the next time I see an exciting Asian startup trying to make it in travel, this would be my advice; don’t get fixated on becoming an industry disruptor in the consumer sphere, instead explore how your technology can help solve an important issue in a B2B company. While it may not be their current priority, or one which their R&D team is focusing on, by helping to solve that problem, you could make a huge difference to a company’s business, and hopefully the chance of success for your startup.

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/31/cb-insights-3358-tech-exits-in-2016-unicorn-births-down-68/

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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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