Wednesday, September 19, 2007

A little bit of Amadeus + A little bit of Sabre = Moneydirect

Press releases have been flying all over the place confirming the name and nature of the Amadeus and Sabre Euro announced last month. The version on AsiaTravelTips tells us that the new venture - called Moneydirect - do payment processing and collections. They describe it as
an industry solution for secure, automated payment processing, clearing and reconciliation for the travel and tourism industry
This is not completely a new business. The Australian arm has been in operation since 1991 and claims to already have 6,000 customers, including Australian based offline giant Flight Centre (according to the customer comment section of their website).

I wonder what if anything can be read out of the announcement that it with be the Sabre rep - James Filsinger - that will be CEO with the Amadeus rep - Laurent Chartier - coming in as the COO/number 2. Someone always has to be number one in a company even in a 50:50 JV but this is one with two competitors and one of those competitors is the boss. Could be very interesting to see or maybe I am trying too hard to find a bit of spicy conflict to liven up the story.

UPDATE - Amadeus have given us some more insight the comments section. Sadly no conflict or spice.

4 comments:

Travolution Blogger said...

I was trying to find some juice to liven up our version too.

for me, their insistence on trying to be an industry standard, but without the input - yet - of the Travelport guys, will be another significant area to watch.

Anonymous said...

untill the money flows, not many carers. once it becomes a steam train.... different story

Anonymous said...

Having some knowledge of this transaction I am absolutely sure that you're looking for spice where none exists.......but nice try!

Anonymous said...

Hi Tim,

Interesting questions you are raising. Here is the view from Amadeus.

The board of directors of the company will be 50:50, so none of the 2 parents will be the boss.
The functions such as CEO, COO are determined based on experience and capabilities of the employees. James happens to be perfectly suited to occupy a CEO function and Laurent to be a COO. James and Laurent have already been working hand in hand in the past 12 months.

Travolutionblogger asks about Travelport. Moneydirect is fully open to Travelport agencies joining and integrating with Travelport systems. As a matter of fact, the largest base of agency users of Moneydirect in Australia are Travelport agencies.