The European Commission has ranked Amadeus as one of the leading companies in Europe for investment in research and development.
The 2012 EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard, an annual report published by the EC, examines the largest 1,000 European companies investing in R&D during 2011 and ranks them according to the total amount invested. Amadeus comes in 72nd position.
The company spent €347.5 million in 2011, an increase of 6.7% on the previous year, to research and develop technologies for use in the travel sector. This represented 12.7% of revenues.
Amadeus R&D executive vice president Hervé Couturier said: “This further emphasises our reputation for innovation, with many years of experience in pioneering travel industry products and initiatives such as Altéa and, more recently, Amadeus Featured Results.
“Nonetheless, our desire for innovation has not yet been satisfied and R&D will continue to inspire our evolution as a large-scale technology pioneer.”
The European Union’s long-term financing institution, the European Investment Bank, granted a €200 million loan to Amadeus last May to finance the research & development of a variety of projects in the area of IT for airlines, airports, hotels, and rail between 2012 and 2014.
Amadeus has 16 R&D centres around the world – Nice, London, Sydney, Antwerp, Aachen, Frankfurt, Boston, Miami, Toronto, Strasbourg, Tucson, Bangalore, Bogota, Warsaw, Istanbul and Bangkok – which currently house a team of more than 4,500 people.