flyadeal, Saudi Arabia’s low-cost airline, has taken another step to widen its distribution strategy by going live on the Amadeus booking platform giving travel agents access to the airline’s growing network of flights.
Beginning with the
domestic market – home to almost 4,000 travel agents accredited to
the International Air Transport Association (IATA) – flyadeal will implement a
phased rollout of the reservation tool to the trade in more countries over the next
few months. When agents search for a particular route, the Amadeus GDS now
displays flyadeal among the operating airlines.
flyadeal now operates
over 200 daily scheduled services from bases in Riyadh, Jeddah and Dammam to
more than 30 destinations across the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and in the Middle
East, North Africa, Europe and South Asia with a fleet of 42 Airbus
A320 aircraft.
Steven Greenway,
flyadeal Chief Executive Officer, said: “Signing up with Amadeus is a historic
step for flyadeal. GDS connection expands distribution of our inventory of
flights and fares, and offers the wider travel agency community with instant
access, convenience and booking capability through their desktop terminals.
“Having scaled our
operations over the years, building a strong domestic network of flights and
increasingly moving into international operations, our business has evolved
into more partnerships, including travel agencies which we see as a vital part
of our growth story to complement our own direct booking channels.”
Rogier van Enk,
flyadeal Chief Commercial and Customer Experience Officer, added: “As we start
off in our home market of Saudi Arabia, the Amadeus booking tool will be rolled
out to other international markets that we fly to and those that we don’t over the
next few months.
“With flyadeal planning a pipeline of interline and codeshare agreements with other airlines over the next 12 months, GDS access plays an even more important commercial role to distribute our portfolio of products enabling travel agents to better serve their customers – our passengers.” -TradeArabia News Service