You May Need This: How Amadeus’ Digital Concierge Enhances the Travel Journey

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Image via Amadeus

Amadeus makes the most of travelers’ away time with digital services that work in the background.

Tapping into the secondary needs of people when they travel, Amadeus has developed a digital concierge that prompts passengers to plan for their absence before they go. Currently in beta, Feasy – short for “freaking easy travel” – operates on Amadeus’ Ambient Services, a B2B platform that powers data services.

Leaving your car at the airport for two days unoccupied? “This is the best time to do car maintenance,” says Marion Mesnage, head of Research, Innovation and Ecosystems at Amadeus IT Group. “Or let’s say you have a dog – we can push a notification for dogsitting before you travel. Feasy recommends services that travelers would use anyway, but at a time when it’s convenient for them.”

To execute the above car-maintenance scenario, for example, Steve Kopp, head of Amadeus’ internal business incubator, Horizon 3, says the company is coordinating with Mercedes-Benz car dealers. “Whenever we detect the traveler is leaving on a trip … Feasy sends them an offer whereby … the car dealer will pick up their car, do the maintenance and bring it back when their plane lands, leveraging the traveler’s time away effectively,” says Kopp.

Frictionless technical integration is key. Travelers should be able to use a service even if they don’t have an account with the provider. And since Feasy profiles would already contain users’ information, they won’t need to reregister or set up an account again.

“The idea is for services to be pushed to, not pulled by, travelers by leveraging existing touchpoints on messaging platforms, thereby avoiding the hassle of having them download and update applications,” explains Kopp. “We want to be present and seamlessly integrated with what travelers are already using – that’s one of the fundamental pillars.”

Feasy uses a combination of human and AI input to generate dialogue, but as it scales up with users and suppliers, AI will power the service. “It’s already started, says Kopp. “A third of the trip plan is built automatically, derived from a combination of user preferences, travel context and service recommendations. We’re currently manually testing because we want to inject variations in certain services that we push.”

Though Feasy is an Amadeus product, Kopp points to the potential of franchising. Though he wouldn’t be drawn into revealing names, he says that white labeling “is absolutely a possibility, and I can confirm that we’re receiving many requests already from a very wide range of travel providers, ranging from airlines to OTAs to hotels.”

“You May Need This” was originally published in the 10.1 February/March issue of APEX Experience magazine.