Migration to Amadeus will increase agency's business efficiency and enhance its offer to customers

Beirut, Lebanon 21 March 2011: Amadeus, a leading travel technology partner and transaction processor for the global travel and tourism industry, announces that Kurban Travel, Lebanon's largest travel agency, has fully migrated its business to Amadeus to boost productivity and enhance its offer to customers.

Through Amadeus solutions, Kurban Travel will now have access to wider airline, hotel and other travel related content which will enhace the offering to the traveller. Kurban Travel customers will also have access to their flights and hotel reservations while on the move through Amadeus CheckMyTrip for Mobile applications on smartphone devices such as iPhone and Blackberry.

Nadine Kurban, Managing Director, Kurban Travel, said: "The decision to replace our reservation system for Amadeus, after 15 years of using another provider, represents a turning point for our company. It means that we have the latest technology and that while increasing our business efficiency, we will be able to bring an improved offer to our customers enabling them to access to a wider range of content and services tailored to their specific needs. The move to Amadeus brings us in line with Kurban France, which already uses the Amadeus platform."

Amadeus' solutions deployed to Kurban Travel include the Amadeus Selling Platform, the world's most-used retailing application for travel professionals. Through Amadeus Selling Platform, nearly 90,000 travel agency points of sale worldwide access the most comprehensive database of global and local content for both business and leisure trips. Travel agencies can book over 430 airlines, including 59 low cost carriers, over 87,000 hotel properties, and 29 global & local car rental providers and bookers across 36,800 locations worldwide, all through a single, easy-to-use interface. Travel agents can also issue tickets quickly and easily, and offer a higher level of service through powerful and user-friendly features such as graphical aircraft seat maps and automatic highlighting of customer preferences.

Kurban Travel has also adopted Amadeus Service Fee Manager, a completely integrated solution for the efficient storage, calculation and collection of all distribution-related service fees, and Amadeus e-Power, a fully customisable, high performance and easy-to-use internet booking engine, that will allow Kurban to move online and deliver full booking service online.

Commenting on the partnership, Selim Boutros, General Manager, Amadeus Lebanon, said: "Winning the Kurban Travel account is definitely a major step forward for Amadeus Lebanon as we are the newest global distributor in the market. We ensured a smooth, efficient and quick migration of Kurban Travel to Amadeus with conversion training prior to migration and on site support for the first 10 days. The migration was performed overnight, meaning no interruptions in service with 5,000 PNRs (Passenger Name Records) fully migrated. We are extremely pleased to support the biggest travel agent in Lebanon with Amadeus' proven technology and content."

- Ends -

Amadeus is a leading transaction processor and provider of advanced technology solutions for the global travel and tourism industry.

Customer groups include travel providers (e.g. airlines, hotels, rail, ferries, etc.), travel sellers (travel agencies and websites), and travel buyers (corporations and individual travellers).

The group operates a transaction-based business model and processed 850 million billable travel transactions in 2010.

Amadeus has central sites in Madrid (corporate headquarters and marketing), Nice (development) and Erding (operations - data processing centre) and regional offices in Miami, Buenos Aires, Bangkok and Dubai. At a market level, Amadeus maintains customer operations through 73 local Amadeus Commercial Organisations covering 195 countries.

Amadeus is listed on the Madrid, Barcelona, Bilbao and Valencia stock exchanges and trades under the symbol "AMS.MC". For the year ended December 31 2010, the company reported revenues of €2,683 million and EBITDA of €1,015 million. The Amadeus group employs over 10,270 people worldwide, with 123 nationalities represented at the central offices.

To find out more about Amadeus please visit www.amadeus.com  

To visit the Amadeus Investor Relations centre please www.investors.amadeus.com

© Press Release 2011