Amadeus Rolls Out ‘Curated Search’ Platform

Amadeus applied its advanced search technology to remedy the “information overload” that travelers face when researching travel, creating a platform that returns just a few curated results.

Designed to simplify travel search, Amadeus Featured Results provides what its beta tester called “breakthrough curated results functionality.”

Amadeus said travelers will no longer have to sift through hundreds of recommendations. Instead they will be presented with a “more relevant” set of search results at the top of the screen.

The curated results are few, representing the cheapest, fastest and most popular results, along with a sponsored result. Amadeus said it is processing more data than ever before in order to return the best options in a tenth of a second.

OTA in beta test
Amadeus Featured Results is being piloted in beta form by BCD Holdings’ Vayama, an online travel agency focused on international travel, with 100 origin and destination combinations flown by 500 airlines.

The points of origin for the beta test are New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago and Miami.  

Full global market availability is scheduled for early 2013.

Data factored in
The solution’s algorithm uses both price and business intelligence data to ferret out the flight options most often booked by people who searched city pairs for the same date.

It integrates live registration data to flag search results such as the number of active reservations on a specific flight, remaining seats, when the price was last booked and other factors that indicate the value of the offer.

Tenth of a second
Previously, searching for a flight from New York to London on any online travel site might mean waiting up to 30 seconds for a list of hundreds and hundreds of itineraries, according to Vayama.

Now, the same search happens in a tenth of a second and produces a curated set of results based on a traveler’s specific queries.

Do customers want curated results? According to an Amadeus-commissioned study conducted by PhoCusWright in 2011, consumers are overwhelmed by the universe of search options and experience anxiety about finding the best price among them.