Amadeus Hospitality Is Making Bigger Hotel Deals as It Chases a Breakthrough

In 1992, then-college sophomore Lee Horgan did an internship at a hospitality services company, Newmarket Software, that his uncle had created in the mid-1980s. After college, Horgan returned to what later was called Newmarket International and began doing work in sales and rose up the ranks to become chief executive. In late 2013, he helped to sell the company for $500 million to Amadeus, the travel technology colossus based in Madrid. Since 2016, Horgan has been chief executive of Amadeus Hospitality, the hotel software division -- a collection of businesses, such as Hotel SystemsPro, Itesso, Libra, MeetingMatrix, and MTech, that Amadeus has acquired in the past half-dozen years. Horgan is aiming to do for hotels what Amadeus has done for airlines in providing a full suite of solutions for running their operations. But he and his team face potential pitfalls. The type of platform Amadeus Hospitality hopes to sell to the industry hasn't necessarily been successful before. Horgan's background has been in only one segment of the hotel industry, while the strategy requires an appeal to hotels of all types. Critics also say there are also still several gaps in Amadeus Hospitality's software suite. Skift spoke with Horgan last week to get an update on the status of Amadeus Hospitality, a year on from its debut as a new platform. IHG switch is on track The most visible brand that Horgan's team has signed up has been InterContinental Hotels Group, which is Amadeus Hospitality's first customer for a new guest reservation system. In the third quarter of this year, IHG will begin testing a multi-year move away from its in-house system, Holidex, to Amadeus's new one. IHG says the rollout would happen in 2018. Horgan says things are on track to meet the target date. "Our team and the IHG teams are working well together. I think as far as where we are right now. I couldn't be happier," Horgan says. That would be welcome news for management at Amadeus headquarters in Madrid. In May, Amadeus IT Group CEO Luis Maroto told Skift, “IHG is admired in the industry. The moment we implement this reservation solution for IHG, it will represent a breakthrough. It will become our reference customer.” The new platform is designed to make it easier for IHG to upsell customers based on their profiles and past behavior throughout a trip and would help the company get more adept at "yield management," or getting top dollar from a potential gue