International real estate developer JTRE partners with Europe’s oldest hospitality brand to offer owners and guests a one-of-a-kind luxury beachfront experience
07.11.2023 - 21:59 / skift.com / Justin Dawes
Amadeus and Microsoft have been working together to explore how generative AI can be integrated into new technologies for the travel industry.
The companies, which announced a strategic partnership in early 2021, made two big announcements over the past several weeks about the result of the generative AI exploration.
And there’s more to come, according to Cyril Tetaz, executive vice president of airline solutions for Amadeus.
“We have many other initiatives with Microsoft,” Tetaz said during an interview with Skift.
The primary business for Amadeus is its distribution system, an intermediary between airlines and travel sellers. It also has a large business of providing software to airlines and a growing hotel software business.
Most recently, Amadeus revealed a new AI-powered retail system meant to make airline sales more like shopping on Amazon. It’s meant to help airlines more easily sell its own products as well as other travel products like hotels. For the customer, that means a simple app for tracking everything.
The companies also recently revealed that they are piloting a connection between the upgraded Microsoft 365 chat and Cytric Easy, the corporate travel booking platform owned by Amadeus. The vision is that an employee could use natural language through Microsoft 365 to book a business trip.
Below are highlights of three other AI-related projects Amadeus working on in partnership with Microsoft, according to the interview with Tetaz. Microsoft has exclusive access to ChatGPT’s tech as an early investor in OpenAI.
All three are products that Amadeus clients would contract the company to use for their own businesses. Everything will be hosted on the cloud-based Microsoft Azure system, set up in a way that gives clients easy access to real-time data that they can use to inform decisions.
Tetaz said Amadeus already has a pilot in place with one client to explore how to personalize website landing pages. That means the homepage of an airline would be unique for each user depending on data they provide through customer profiles.
The vision includes embedding prices and itineraries directly onto a landing page based on what an individual user typically is looking for.
“We see a much better and much more natural way for the airline to engage with … their app and their website thanks to gen. AI,” he said.
Tetaz explained how the passenger management system that Amadeus recently released can be used to automatically send a customer new flight options after a cancellation.
He said Amadeus is working on something similar for flight crews, which would automatically reschedule their itineraries after a cancellation.
“We’re really connecting the dots and thinking pretty holistically about
International real estate developer JTRE partners with Europe’s oldest hospitality brand to offer owners and guests a one-of-a-kind luxury beachfront experience
Amadeus unveils annual trends exploring what travelers expect in the year ahead. Influencers become agents, business class fares unbundle, artificial intelligence matures, and musical tourism drives demand, while eVTOLs prepare for take-off.
All-in-one online travel platform, branded “BusinessToGo,” to meet corporate travel demand from small- and medium-sized enterprise (SME) businesses in the UK and France.
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New Hotels in the Cayman Islands for 2024 Scheduled to open in Q2 2024 is Hotel Indigo Grand Cayman. The 282-room 10-storey beachfront property will provide an upper midscale experience featuring multiple restaurants, a 6,700 square foot ballroom, a pool deck and a rooftop bar. Indigo’s restaurants and bars around the world are known as a favourite destination for visitors and locals alike. With sustainability in mind, the hotel is being built to LEED standards, which ensures high-performance buildings that have less of an impact on the environment. Hotel Indigo will use a geothermal/ice storage combination and will feature insulated glazing throughout to reduce energy consumption. The latest in Cayman real estate developer, Dart’s, hospitality portfolio, Hotel Indigo is expected to generate several hundred jobs when it opens. In 2022, Dart launched its Hospitality Training Programme, which provides Caymanians with the opportunity to obtain first-hand industry experience via a three-month work experience within the Dart hospitality portfolio.
World-renowned international hotelier Kempinski Hotels has been named operator of a unique new luxury beachfront residences and resort, located on one of the last remaining pristine stretches of the award-winning Grace Bay Beach in Providenciales, Turks and Caicos Islands. The project is being developed by JTRE, a leading European real estate developer and will be operated by Kempinski, Europe’s oldest hotelier – with more than 80 premium properties under management in 36 countries. The two companies signed an operating agreement and together will bring a new level of internationally renowned hospitality, contemporary design and elegant service to the Turks & Caicos Islands portfolio of vacation and ownership offerings.
Alaska Airlines launched new daily, year-round nonstop flights between Seattle/Everett and Honolulu, as well as Portland and Miami.
Revisiting Panem, the dystopian country in which The Hunger Games novels and movies are set, in prequel film The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes offered director Francis Lawrence an opportunity to present the world through a new lens. Set 64 years before those earlier works, the new film (based on a 2020 novel of the same name) showcases the familiar country just 10 years post-war—the thriving political Capitol, 12 outlying districts. As part of reconstruction, the Capitol has introduced the series' titular competition.
With the majestic domes of the Royal Pavilion as its backdrop – lit in magical neon colours if you go after dark – this real ice rink is a popular highlight of Brighton’s yuletide offering, and the only one in the UK powered by renewable energy. Families are warmly welcomed, with penguin skate aids available for £5 and a beginners’ rink where young skaters can safely build confidence on the ice. Rinkside, a covered bar and café and outdoor terraced areas offer mulled wine, mince pies, cakes, snacks and a decent children’s menu – and a great place to sit and watch if you don’t want to risk the ice yourself.Adults and children aged 12 and over £18, concessions £15, 12 and under £14, royalpavilionicerink.co.uk; family room, B&B, from £179, queenshotelbrighton.com
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One British childhood winter experience remains the same, despite all the changes of the past century. It’s the one where you gaze out of the window, mesmerised by the falling snow, and start fantasising about building an igloo or a snow cave, then sleeping in it overnight. A few fortunate kids get to follow that up, but for most the fantasy is quickly quashed. The blizzard stops, the snow melts, you lob some slush at your mates then go inside to watch Ski Sunday.
Anyone interested in food as a window to class could do worse than exploring the options available on the RMS Titanic. The handful of menus that survived the wreck reveal important differences in the way the ocean liner's passengers ate. While third-class passengers dined on rice soup, gruel and cabin biscuits (essentially, a stomach-settling hardtack), first-class diners had a panoply of options.