Today Amadeus IT Holding announced that it has acquired Hitit Loyalty, the customer relationship management (CRM) division of Hitit Computer Services, a provider of passenger service systems (PSS).
Hitit Loyalty provides back-end loyalty solutions for more than 40 airlines, which is more customers than any of its competitors.
The move is part of Amadeus’s effort to cultivate growth in Turkey and the Middle East, where Hitit has made dramatic inroads.
It’s Amadeus’s first move into airline loyalty programs. The Spanish company will integrate Crane CRM & Loyalty Management Solutions into its airline IT business. The division will be renamed Amadeus IT Services Turkey.
This year, Hitit Loyalty’s operations will be integrated into Amadeus’ Airline IT business, a growing revenue stream for the company.
More than half of Hitit Loyalty’s existing customers already use Altéa, Amadeus’s PSS passenger service system used by more than 110 airlines for frequent flyer, corporate, partnership and alliance management. Says Amadeus:
By 2015, Hitit Loyalty products will be available both as an add-on module to Amadeus Altéa as well as a stand-alone product, which will help expand the company’s business with non-Altéa airlines.
Generic PSS systems have bare-bones functionality, managing member data such as accruals, redemptions, and point balances by status level.
Hitit Loyalty’s signature solution, Crane, is much more sophisticated, such as by enabling airlines to run individual campaigns and to market the performance of those campaigns by segment.
