The global travel technology market is forecast to grow by 14.2% over the the course of the next four years to $12.21 billion.
The compound annual growth rate figure is currently forecast to hit 7.5% in 2015, on the back of a market size of $8.35 billion last year.
The predictions are part of a major study by Technavio Research which has examined the revenue generated by third party service providers such as Amadeus, Sabre and Travelport, as well as other vendors operating in the travel, tourism and hospitality sector such as Navitaire (which was recently snapped up by Amadeus for $830 million).
The report does not include in-house IT spend by airlines, hotels and travel agencies.
Central to the growth of the sector will be an increase in the number of bookings (and distribution fees) made through online travel agencies over the period to 2019, Technavio says.
The forecast also suggests the gradual shift for the main vendors from their existing, core GDS products to IT solutions, especially in the cloud-based reservation system arena.
The split in 2014 was roughly 70-30 in favour of GDS revenues, but this is expected to grow to around 60-40 by 2019.
The global travel technology market was dominated by EMEA in 2014, which accounted for 46% of the market.
Technavio says Amadeus is the leading player in this particular region, with a estimated market share of more than 60%.
The Americas held 35.3% of the market, with the US accounting for more than 60% of that. Asia-Pacific accounted for 18.7% of the market in 2014.
The report does not forecast how the regions might change by 2019, but says the Chinese business travel sector is likely to fuel massive growth by 2017 as it moves to become the largest spender in the world.
NB:Travel technology image via Shutterstock.