Rest assured that Amadeus officials aren't losing sleep over the prospect that Google, with ITA Software now in the fold, will one day become a major competitor in the provision of airline IT services.
And, Google Flight Search? Amadeus doesn't envision Google becoming a pseudo global distribution system or even a travel agency.
Luis Maroto, president and CEO of GDS services and airline-IT provider Amadeus, said as much during the company's third quarter earnings call today.
ITA Software has an airline IT business and Amadeus, which owned a piece of ITA years ago before the two companies had a falling out, doesn't see Google leveraging ITA to make some kind of airline IT play.
"It is not our view that Google will become a competitor with us on the IT front," Maroto said.
He said Amadeus has seen no impact from Google Flight Search, but will be watching.
"We don't expect anything to change dramatically in the coming situation," Maroto added.
Despite financial analysts asking Maroto about competition from Google, the idea that Amadeus would be worried about Google as a major competitor in airline passenger services systems is relatively absurd.
Just consider Amadeus' pipeline of announced airline PSS migrations: Air Berlin, BMI, Cathay Pacific, Singapore Airlines, SAS, all in 2012; Thai Airlines and Asiana in 2013; and Korean Air and All Nippon Airways in 2014. Amadeus says it also has other signed deals which have not been publicly disclosed.
And, if anyone believes that migrating airline reservations systems is for the feint of heart, Maroto said Amadeus already is working on the 2014 migration of Korean Air.
And, many of the migrations slated for the first half of 2012, including those for Air Berlin, BMI, Cathay Pacific, Singapore Airlines and SAS, have already been tested, Maroto said.
Of Amadeus' two business lines, distribution and airline IT, the latter is still very much the junior partner, although the projected growth is substantial.
Through the first nine months of 2011, airline IT at Amadeus took in euro 471.4 million ($640 million) compared with euro 1.6 billion ($2.2 billion) on the distribution side.
But, Amadeus projects its number of passengers board will grow about 95% to more than 725 million annually from 2010 to 2014 because of airline migrations and organic growth.
On the distribution front, Amadeus says its travel agency airline bookings increased 4.8% this year through the Sept. 30, outpacing the GDS industry as a whole by 2.6 percentage points.
Growth in Amadeus air bookings through Sept. 30 was especially strong in Latin America (10.1%), Asia-Pacific (7.2%) and North America 6.7%, the company said. In Amadeus' largest market, Western Europe, its travel agency booking climbed 3.4%.
Don't expect a major push for Amadeus to increase its marketshare in North America as Maroto said it is not Amadeus' strategy to pay travel agencies increased incentives to capture share.
Instead, he argued that technology and content improvements will drive gains in North America.
Maroto said Amadeus "has not yet been able to break the [US] market," adding "we hope the results of our investments will start to pay off."