Amadeus has made three internal appointments to new leadership roles within the business.
The European GDS and travel technology business has promoted Dietmar Fauser to senior vice president (SVP) of technology platforms engineering (TPE), Wolfgang Krips has been made SVP of corporate strategy and Alex Luzarraga becomes leader of Amadeus’ travel audience and destinations business.
Fauser will also be joining the company’s executive committee, with immediate effect. Having previously been VP of core platforms and middleware (CPM), he has played a significant role in supporting, Krips the outgoing SVP of TPE, in building the new organisation, said Amadeus.
Fauser brought together the engineering and operations teams under TPE, “improving developer productivity through automated integration”, the firm said. It added he also spent time developing and maintaining Amadeus’ cloud and technology platforms to focus on improving system responsiveness and performance.
The newly appointed SVP holds an engineering degree in IT from the University of Applied Science in Darmstadt in Germany. He joined Amadeus in 1998 as a senior software engineer.
Before he was VP of CPM, Fauser was a director of the passenger name record (PNR) division, part of the team that built the first Altéa product and appointed VP of architecture, quality and governance (AQG) in 2013.
As a result of this move, Krips, who established Amadeus’ TPE division in July 2017, will take over the role of SVP of corporate strategy. In this new role Krips will work to improve Amadeus’ business strategy, developing opportunities for future growth.
Krips, who joined Amadeus in 2013, was previously VP of global operations where he held responsibility for Amadeus‘ operations in Erding and the company’s global operations.
Before joining Amadeus, Krips held various senior management positions in development, IT and services. He holds a Ph.D. in physics from Cologne University in Germany and studied economics at Germany’s Open University in Hagen.
Luis Maroto, chief executive officer of Amadeus, said: “At Amadeus, we are always looking ahead to anticipate our customers’ future needs and design the solutions to fulfil them.
“At a time when our services are increasingly moving into the cloud and are harnessing the power of new technologies, Dietmar’s in-depth expertise in this area will give us a unique competitive edge and vision.
“Wolfgang’s leadership during the last six years in TPE and global operations has been instrumental in moving our systems into the future. I am convinced that his deep technology expertise and strategic approach will bring new thinking to our corporate strategy.”
Alex Luzarraga, previously head of corporate strategy, will now lead Amadeus’ travel audience and destinations business.
Moving to a more commercial role, Luzarraga will oversee Amadeus’s advertising assets and strategy, leveraging digital data to “benefit customers and support them as they embrace the industry’s continued digital transformation,” said Amadeus.
Luzarraga, who holds a degree in business and a MBA from Escuela Superior de Administración y Dirección de Empresas (ESADE), as well as a degree in economics from the Universidad de Barcelona, took over leadership of corporate strategy in 2011.
Amadeus said that during his time in this unit he played an influential role in reshaping Amadeus, as the company expanded its global footprint and addressable markets.