Amadeus operates one of the world's most extensive electronic marketplaces. It enables travel agents and travel service providers to market and sell travel, to corporate and consumer end-users, in over 200* markets around the world.

In addition, their modular technology is used by over 100 airlines, and other travel service providers, to optimize their internal operational requirements.

The core of their business is to serve many different companies - whether airlines, travel agents, hotel operators or car rental firms. The rapid expansion of this business has helped them establish a reputation as the fastest growing and most widely used global distribution system (GDS).

Amadeus provides the technology that moves the travel industry.

A brief history of Amadeus

• founded in 1987; fully operational since 1992
  
• publicly listed company since 1999
  
• three founder airline shareholders currently hold 59.92% of the company: Air France (23.36%), Iberia (18.28%) and Lufthansa (18.28%)
  
• remaining shares held publicly

Travel agents - core users of the Amadeus reservation system

Amadeus provides a comprehensive range of services to travel agency subscribers. Over 155,000 travel agency terminals connect to Amadeus.

Airline users

Amadeus is the only GDS to offer airlines the ability to use the their distribution system, not just for distribution, but also for making bookings at the airline's airport ticket offices (ATOs) and city ticket offices (CTOs).

• over 100 airline customers with more than 70,000 Amadeus terminals installed

They are truly global

• they lead the market in Western Europe and Latin America
  
• They are in the process of consolidating their positions in the US, Africa and Asia Pacific regions
  
• Amadeus recently acquired Vacation.com (largest US marketing network for leisure travel)
  
• they have the most extensive international distribution network worldwide
  
• more international bookings are made through Amadeus than through any other system

Wide range of solutions and technology

* As of 2001, Amadeus calculates its worldwide presence based on the list of territories published by the International Organization for Standardization. Accordingly the total number of markets served by Amadeus amounts to 198 at 31 December 2000, of which 167 have both travel agencies and airline sales offices while 31 have only airline sales offices.