With Travelport Opinions seeking to bolster enrollment of travel agents' friends and colleagues and Sabre's Agentstream expanding into new markets, Amadeus is considering the establishment of a "collaboration community" in North America for Amadeus travel agents.
This new Amadeus community would be for Amadeus-affiliated travel agents only and would be part of the Amadeus travel agency extranet, says spokeswoman Debra Iannaci.
Travelport Opinions encourages membership from outside the agency community and Travelport fold, and Agentstream is open to any travel agent, regardless of GDS affiliation.
It's unclear what kind of timetable Amadeus has in mind for the new community and how social it might be.
Some might characterize "collaboration community" as sounding a tad rigid.
Today, Amadeus-affiliated travel agents can use the Collaborate section of Amadeus e-University to share information, but the dynamic isn't very social-media or community-oriented and is heavily tilted toward tools of the craft, training- and educational-information sharing.
While Amadeus e-University is open to Amadeus-connected agents only, the blog can be read by anyone -- although it's doubtful there is much mass appeal in posts like Amadeus Ticket Changer comes to Canada! (A new User Guide and Quick Card too!)
The Amadeus e-University has about 7,000 registered members, the company says.
In the past, Amadeus offered a community forum for its North America agents through its AgentNet portal, but that enterprise was dropped in favor of Amadeus e-University, Iannaci says.
In contrast to Travelport Opinions and Agentstream, both of which are seeking to become global communities, Amadeus seems to be taking a market by market approach for now, at least.
"Other markets -- Germany, for example -- also established active agency communities for Amadeus agency customers," Iannaci says.
Stay tuned for more details about Amadeus' community plans in North America closer to the launch date.
Disclosure: Tnooz has a content partnership with Agentstream where some Tnooz stories appear in Agentstream.