The backbone of travel technology requires reliable, cloud-based operations

We can all imagine what a perfect, integrated travel experience looks and feels like. Every step, from booking to departure, arrival, and beyond, is seamless and personalized. Effortless planning, tailored recommendations, minimal paperwork and queues, and flexible communication. Less time spent on processes means more time creating unforgettable moments. It’s thanks largely to Amadeus’ technology that we can enjoy a more enjoyable journey.

When you book a hotel, search for a flight, or rent a car, you’re likely using Amadeus technology. The Madrid-headquartered company works with more than 400 airlines, 200 airports, and one million hotel properties. While travelers don’t often see the Amadeus name, its software supports the entire journey, from inspiration, bookings, and payments to airport experience, travel, and arrival.

To continue its journey to make travel work better, Amadeus is migrating its SaaS products to the cloud and adapting its core business processes accordingly. The migration will change how the company develops and delivers services, making its products more scalable and secure, and ultimately ensuring travelers have a consistent, frictionless experience. This huge transformation is being undertaken, partially, using the ServiceNow Platform as a digital backbone. In doing so, Amadeus is also removing complexity from its global operations, making the company more responsive, efficient, and better able to deliver new services to customers faster.

A cloud-native operation model lets Amadeus detect and resolve issues quickly

With 10,000 engineers, Amadeus’ business relies on custom software development. Adopting a cloud-native operating model allows the team to develop and launch apps more quickly, provides additional layers of security, and helps it respond rapidly to changing customer demands.

“Historically, we’d developed lots of our own tools. Moving to the cloud requires a deeper technology partner approach. ServiceNow IT Operations Management (ITOM) helps us to understand what is running, and where,” says Frank Richter, ServiceNow Platform Owner, Amadeus.

“Alongside other partners, ServiceNow’s expertise and solutions have been key to our move to the cloud. ServiceNow IT Operations Management Discovery provides initial visibility into Amadeus’ complex IT environment; ServiceNow Configuration Management Database (CMDB) has built up a library of over 30 million items, their dependencies, and relationships. If something does go wrong, the plan is for AIOps to use machine learning, analytics, and data science to quickly pinpoint what went wrong, giving support teams the specific information they need to take action quickly and get travelers back on track.

“ServiceNow ITOM simplifies the way we manage workflows with our cloud partners,” explains Frank. “We understood that the ServiceNow AI Platform had the tools we needed to manage the transitions and configurations. We now have a strong bind between event management and the CMDB.”

A single portal gives customers easy access to help when it matters most

After mapping its cloud migration with IT Operations Management, Amadeus unified its customer service on ServiceNow Customer Service Management (CSM).

Because Amadeus serves the entire travel journey, its customers have a wide range of needs. Customer Service Management creates a single portal for managing all customer queries from IT issues to special projects. Amadeus is now better equipped to support a broad spectrum of customers from a single platform, offering automated services for simple requests and more personalized support where needed.

“Where there were four tools to process incidents, now there is one,” says Pavle Subarevic, Head of Ordering, Delivery, and Service Solutions, Amadeus.

This means faster, more accurate, and consistent responses for customers. High-volume tasks are managed more efficiently. Service agents have more time to focus on urgent issues.

“We have some customers that span across multiple segments. Now, they have one place for all service requests. They can open one ticket and be assured it is being dealt with. In the back office, this may involve 10 tickets for us. But this complexity is hidden from the customer,” Pavle adds.

Amadeus offers a connected, omni-channel service experience where customers can self-serve or choose their preferred channel. The platform already handles thousands of tickets daily, and Amadeus plans to use Now Assist for Customer Service Management to provide proactive status updates to customers and improve the efficiency of Amadeus’ customer support teams.

“We see a role for Now Assist in updating customers on the progress of their request, in a language of their choice and without technical jargon,” says Pavle. “But we don’t want to swamp customers with continuous updates. There is a balance to be found between reactive and proactive.”

RaptorDB processes data 45% faster for results in real time

Amadeus implemented ServiceNow RaptorDB to supercharge processing speeds across its global systems, ensuring an ultra-fast response to both employee and customer requests.

By deploying RaptorDB across more than 10 instances in less than four months, Amadeus has achieved a 45% improvement in SQL response times.

This faster retrieval of data means when travelers search for a flight or hotel, they get the most up to date information in milliseconds. And for Amadeus’ management, it means reports are generated instantly, populated with real-time data.

Delivering the ultimate ecosystem experience with Technology Provider Service Management

The ServiceNow ecosystem continues to grow. ServiceNow Technology Provider Service Management (TPSM) empowers Amadeus to streamline complex B2B service operations by automating order orchestration and lifecycle workflows across product catalogs, pricing, and fulfilment. Seamlessly integrated with ITSM and CSM, it enables Amadeus to deliver proactive, scalable service experiences with full end-to-end visibility. While Order Management and Strategic Portfolio Management will be used in combination to deliver Amadeus’ largest and most complex solution deployments.

Amadeus sees the engagement with ServiceNow as foundational. It has created a Center of Excellence and Innovation (CoEI) staffed by more than 100 ServiceNow specialists. The goal is to maximize the platform’s performance and value, align projects, and drive connections across the business.

“Our CoEI has been a game-changer,” explains Pavle. “It’s helping build relationships and raise visibility, providing awareness and understanding of how the ServiceNow AI Platform is operating in alignment with our core business priorities. Connection to senior leadership has been key.”

With its commitment to continuous innovation on the ServiceNow AI Platform, every new Amadeus use case will introduce new data into the ecosystem, giving agentic AI the data it needs to make meaningful impact on the business in the future.

“The ServiceNow AI Platform has such potential because of its integration capabilities. The more information we feed it, the more valuable the integrated ecosystem,” says Pavle. “AI is causing us to rethink many aspects of how we work. It’s pushing us to identify areas where people will be key.”