The leisure arm of Amadeus says it is in consultation and cannot comment on potential job losses adding that should anyone be impacted it would seek to ‘redeploy’ them in other positions.

The company released a statement last week saying it was ‘reviewing its offering in the UK’ and that it would be retaining an office here.

Further details from a TravelTainment spokesperson this week say it is revaluating the way it services customers to ‘cater for their needs better’ and that it will concentrate on solutions for individual customers and dynamic packaging in this market.

The spokesperson goes on to say that the refocus of the strategy will strengthen TravelTainment and ensure a successful future.

No time-frame has been given for the completion of the refocus.

While TravelTainment has made inroads in Germany in the travel agency and online market some believe take-up in the UK did not meet expectations.

Amadeus acquired Traveltainment in 2006 turning it into a business unit to create leisure solutions in 2008.

In February 2009, Andy Owen-Jones was promoted from managing director to chief executive of Traveltainment but stepped down about 18 months later to join the Amadeus Leisure Group’s supervisory board.

In fact, if the search and booking experience was better, travel websites would perhaps have better conversion rates. That’s the wider argument.

So the iPad is the perfect device to try and improve such wrinkles in the customer journey.

Or so says TravelTainment, the leisure travel technology provider within Amadeus.

The company has been working on a prototype for some months and is now starting to demo the concept to new and existing clients – especially at this week’s Travel Technology Europe event in London.

The iPad app essentially does exactly the same as the existing TravelTainment leisure search and booking system but with all the UEX twists and tools that come with the iPad – plus, of course, a larger workspace for touch control, very similar to the system created by Kayak for its hotel search last year.

TravelTainment admits clients are banging on the development door asking for iPad applications for their systems – but the PR value and showcase of the technology in a far more accessible environment means

Here is a demo clip:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beI4VkPWgNE

The company says the trio of new services are part of a major repositioning of the brand in an attempt to rid itself of a reputation around the old-fashioned, analogue TV directory service which has dogged it for decades.

Central to the new suite of products is, what it claims, a new way of searching of products on its system, based on inspiration rather than just date and destination.

The new website allows users to search by travel product type (holiday, flight, hotel) coupled with budget, whether the user is part of a group, family, single or couple, and the ability to search for deals on a map.

Managing director Vicky Sanders says the new approach was led in part by research which indicated 80% of visitors to the site actually had no idea where they wanted to go.

The new design and user experience came before the technology to support it, rather than the other way round, Sanders says. The site was created by the London-based Reading Room agency.

Product suppliers will continue to use the existing Traveltek back-end to upload offers or, alternatively, through an XML feed direct into the system, while content and product information will be fed by Amadeus-owned TravelTainment.

The iPad app (free) will use the same look and feel from the new website, but will be remodelled to showcase what Sanders calls the “inspiration” element of the brand, featuring such tools as a large globe so users can pinpoint destinations and available offers.

Frommers events and destination  content will also be streamed into the iPad app version.

The “considerable investment” in the overhaul of the Teletext Holidays brand comes as parent company DMGT (publisher of the Daily Mail newspaper) prepares at the end of the year to turn off the old analogue TV system used by Teletext Holidays.

A web TV version of Teletext Holidays is also being pushed out this week, once again featuring much of the same functionality as the main website.

The overhaul does not end there – Teletext holiday rental brand VillaRenters will also get an iPhone app shortly and the entire effort will be supported by a major marketing campaign in the new year.

UK terrestrial TV channels, press and online will feature in two waves of activity, with radio advertising expected in the second wave in the summer of 2011.

However, a previous proposal to develop services for Teletext Holidays for Microsoft Surface tables appears to have fallen by the wayside.

The final article in this five-part series features Andy Owen-Jones (chief executive of Traveltainment), Ben Jackson (chief executive of TourAbout) and airline consultant Al Lenza.

Andy Owen-Jones:

• From website to web presence – The internet is now multi-dimensional. Travel brands will adopt a richer web presence. As social media, self service tools, etc become important web presence is more complex.  OTAs, Tour Operators, Search and new models will all “mash” together in new and unforeseen ways. This will change the boundaries of companies and expose the strengths and weaknesses of business models, culture and technology. Communication will be immediate and direct with customers increasing creativity but making “control” very difficult.
• Some tour operators will be transformed by social media – Customers will become overwhelmed with data and will seek out a combination of interpretation, selection and editorial reflected through the shopping process. Recommendation brands will grow and may reinvigorate tour operators. The tour operators have the chance to extend the “social” interaction and learning from customers during a trip in the way pure retailers cannot. Those who do not hear the messages of their customers (reviews, interaction, rich data) will turn into commodity, price driven players fighting in dynamic packaging wars.

Ben Jackson:

• The year mobile becomes main stream – People have been talking about the mobile web for 10 years and 2010 will be a tipping point. The percentage of searches and bookings from mobile apps will become significant. Kayak is moving into mobile transactions and allocating 20% of its development resource to mobile. Companies need to be serious about addressing their mobile users with dedicated mobile apps and not just skinning their html apps. The iPhone will be the #1 platform. A major cell phone manufacturer will close or post significant losses.
• The rise of the Semantic 3.0 Marketplace – Whilst companies continue to try and engage in the social web more startups will emerge that interweave the social and commerce webs. These will be vertical communities that include Context, Personalization, Search and Commerce, allowing consumers to control and engage directly with companies. Brands will move from reactive monitoring of Twitter like streams to more proactive and contextual engagement with potential customers.

Al Lenza:

• Ancillary product/service transactions will have double digit growth, most of it sold outside GDSs, leading to increasing dis-aggregated content.
• Mobile is going to overtake laptops/netbooks/PCs for procuring travel and other key industry transactions.

And, oh yeah, the partnership could make things more efficient for tour operator customers, enable them to better package scheduled, charter and net-rate flights using the two companies’ integrated services, and provide them with broader options through TravelTainment’s multi-channel distribution platforms.

Several things drove the arrangement. TravelTainment provides a desktop solution and booking engine for tours, but many tour operators still are using decades-old technology for back-of-the house kinds of things such as inventory management, so there was a need to fill that gap. As Amadeus, like other GDSs, looked to diversify leisure offerings, it went looking for a tour technology partner.

Amadeus is tight with Thomas Cook and I have to believe that it knew months before Tnooz broke the story that BlueSky’s days were numbered. And, from the looks of it, another major provider, Anite, appears to be bogged down with the labor-intensive task of migrating existing customers to a new version of its platform.

The genesis of an Amadeus arrangement with FDS, based in Redwood Shores, Calif., had to be in the works for some time, given that their tour and desktop technologies are now intertwined.

Nouvelle Frontières’ apparently successful integration of FDS’ Contour platform earlier this year must have been a confidence-builder for Amadeus and, coupled with the exit of BlueSky, likely provided the backdrop for the announcement of the Amadeus-FDS marketing agreement.

Under the partnership, Amadeus will market Contour to tour operators, and FDS will push TravelTainment’s booking and distribution solutions to FDS’ customer base.

With the technology integration, Contour can be tied into Amadeus Web Services, Amadeus Master Pricer and TravelTainment’s distribution front-ends.

A partnership with Amadeus, and the access that it provides to tour operators in Europe, is one that FDS must have had high on its priority list for some time.

GDS and travel technology supplier Amadeus is to place a major emphasis on providing inspirational tools and intuitive user experience for inclusion in third party websites.

Two projects have been developed within the Madrid-based giant – at the Amadeus IT Group and leisure division Traveltainment – and will be launched

Traveltainment’s system is currently being trialled by STA Travel in Germany and is a front-end search and booking platform for consumer websites.

Internet Booking Engine v.3 allows for a wide ranging of multi-dimensional search parameters to be included such as location, price parameters, holiday type, accommodation requirements, duration and by review – aggregated on a single user page.

Other features include around 400,000 images of destinations and a growing number of 360-degree view pages (currently 5,000).

The system also allows for flight, hotel, packaged and self-bundled holidays to be included in the results.

Traveltainment chief executive Andy Owen-Jones says the new service will hopefully allow companies to see users selecting holidays based more on personal requirements rather than price.

IBEv3 is also being developed for integration into a Microsoft Surface application and follows the company’s existing foray into the touch-screen world with its pilot product for travel agents.

Sister division Amadeus IT Group is jointly spearheading the group’s push into inspiration-led web tools with the launch of its Affinity Shopper system.

The first version of the platform is a tool for travellers looking for fares on airline websites.

Amadeus has abandoned the traditional departure airport, destination and date elements of a product search in favour of what it calls “natural” parameters such as budget limit, trip type (single, return), geography and activities.

The Ajax-led interface plots search results on a map and allows users to reconfigure their requirements as they move through the process.

Users are able to select fares for the booking area of the platform through a range of formats including a traditional list form or bar calendar display.

Amadeus has already secured three partnerships for the system, including one with a major European airline to be announced shortly.

The other two agreements will be revealed by the end of the year, says Amadeus IT Group vice president for product development, sales and e-commerce platforms, Denis Lacroix.

Over a year in the making, Affinity Shopper was developed to integrate data from a partner’s existing back-end and sit alongside existing search and booking functionality.

Lacroix says Affinity Shopper is aimed initially at airlines but will be available and targeted at online travel agencies and business travel agencies in 2010.

NB: Affinity Shopper and the TravelTainment IBE system will be showcased at PhoCusWright’s Travel Innovation Summit on Tuesday 17 November 2009.

The reason? Most travel agents, in the U.S. at least, still prefer to use DOS-like linear commands and time-worn scripts on their green-screen desktops (the screen on Sabre’s actually is blue, I believe) as their preferred user interface. GUIs? Nah, too inefficient.

So, TravelTainment is constructing a Microsoft Surface application for travel agents, and Sheraton apparently has one of the best Microsoft Surface applications in any vertical.

At some of Sheraton’s U.S.  locations, including the Sheraton New York Hotel and Towers and the Sheraton Boston Hotel,  guests apparently can run their fingertips along those cool-looking Surface tables and book restaurants and map their car routes.

Great stuff and I’d bet that many folks would swap the ping-pong table in the basement for one of those Microsoft Surface tables any day.

Microsoft Surface could and will (I hope) transform the way consumers shop for travel.

We’re already seeing so much visual stuff in travel.

Bing recently launched visual search for destinations and Priceline this week introduced Hotel Price Maps as a visual way to make Name-Your-Own Price bidding less opaque.

Meanwhile, ASTA’s Director of Research Melissa Teates says green-screen usage has not been a question on the organization’s recent travel agency technology surveys, but she believes that a majority of U.S. agents still use green screens as their preferred user interface.

There are plenty of GUI desktops out there in GDS land and many travel agents are hip to social media and new technologies.

But, as the emergence of Microsoft Surface symbolizes, the travel agency community increasingly is becoming a world of technology haves and technology have nots.

And, financial questions aren’t always the primary driver in this regard.

Some agents embrace new ways of doing things, and some just don’t.

The reason? It combines all the concierge facilities that a typical hotel would include offline (at a desk, in other words) into a single interactive application.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqk8k_2_wv0

Developers and Surface engineers in the UK and North America agree that very few applications in any vertical market have come close to reproducing this as yet.

Perhaps the worrying conclusion from that is the fact that the Sheraton app was built almost 18 months ago and, as yet, nobody has taken it on further.

Nevertheless, TravelTainment’s Surface app for travel agents, revealed here yesterday, might give it a run for its money, at least in terms of integration with an offiline environment.

Add Microsoft Surface into the mix and the result is a rather exciting interesting technology prototype for travel agencies.

TravelTainment purchased a Surface table earlier this year and started developing a number of applications over the summer.

The result is an retail agency-based tool which allows customers to browse a Google Earth mashup featuring 400,000 photos of hotels and points of interest in the TravelTainment system.

Customers can select individual properties to learn more about availability and facilities.

Once a product is selected the Surface table sends the information to the agent’s desktop computer to finalise the details.

Owen-Jones says the table has the ability to “change the way people look and book travel in hte retail environment”.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8dl8tvTfjs