Amadeus, a leading travel technology partner and transaction processor for the global travel and tourism industry, today published its Corporate Responsibility Report highlighting the company's performance on Corporate Responsibility issues across the Amadeus Group in 195 countries over the past year. The company's commitment to sustained investment in innovation and the value placed on Amadeus' staff is reflected in this extensive document –as is Amadeus' strategy to proactively promote projects that make a real contribution to communities and to the environment. The latest Amadeus Corporate Responsibility Report also highlights Amadeus' activities with 165 projects in 45 countries. Areas covered include education (language and tourism skills training, PC donations, expansion of the Amadeus Tourism Observatory[1]), technology transfer to support business development in the tourism industry (by helping small, emerging entrepreneurs adopt professional processes in their businesses, broadening their commercial reach), local community initiatives and crisis relief. Here are some figures highlighting the company's Corporate Responsibility efforts in the past year: Amadeus around the world is supported by a diverse team that includes 123 different nationalities. Employees received 155,057 hours of classroom training in 2011, with 6. 3 million euros invested in training. Amadeus processes an average of 1 million + bookings per day. 463 million bookings were processed and 439 million passengers were boarded in 2011. R&D investment since 2004 totals more than two billion euros (344 million euros in 2011). The 2011 European Union Industrial Research and Development Investment Scorecard highlighted Amadeus as one of the leading companies in Europe for investment in R&D. There are 16 R&D centres around the world and a team of more than 4,000 people enhancing the company's value proposition for customers worldwide. There are Corporate Responsibility initiatives in 45 countries (nearly twice as many as in 2009). There are close to 800 Amadeus corporate volunteers (four times as many as in the previous year) More than 17,470 working hours were granted by Amadeus volunteers to support community initiatives. A network of 90 Amadeus Corporate Responsibility specialists leads local, regional and global projects worldwide. On environmental matters, Amadeus continued its commitment to optimise operational performance and improved the energy efficiency per transaction processed by 8%. In addition, electricity consumption per employee was reduced for the second consecutive year. Despite increased business operations, Amadeus reduced its overall CO2 emissions by more than 5% in 2011, due both to improved energy efficiency and increased use of renewable energy in the company's largest sites. Amadeus subscribed to the Global Code of Ethics for Tourism, thus pledging to uphold, promote and implement the values of responsible and sustainable tourism development. The Code, adopted in 1999 by the United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) General Assembly and endorsed by the UN General Assembly in 2001, is a set of principles designed to guide the development of tourism in a way that maximises the socio-economic benefits of the sector, whilst minimising negative impacts. Crisis relief has also received increased support from Amadeus. The initiatives developed during 2011 include Corporate Responsibility activities aimed at reducing the effects on the population of natural disasters such as the earthquake in Haiti [see more details at Amadeus in Haiti short video], floods in Bangkok and Australia, the Japanese Tsunami and Sendai earthquake, the typhoon in the Philippines and the crisis in the Horn of Africa. “At Amadeus we believe our expertise in the travel industry combined with our staff's motivation to make a difference provides a perfect platform to improve our environmental performance and support the communities in which we operate," says Tomás López Fernebrand, Senior Vice President, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary. “This is a mission where every effort is needed and welcomed. We are committed to further promote and facilitate this kind of initiative." The Amadeus Corporate Responsibility Report follows the Global Reporting Initiatives (GRI) Guidelines which set a framework for organisations to disclose their economic, environmental, and social performance, in a transparent manner. GRI awarded the Amadeus latest CR report the highest possible grade (A+). “I am satisfied to see that resulting figures confirm that during 2011 we were able to increase and strengthen our cooperation in Corporate Responsibility projects with various stakeholders such as airlines. A clear example of this is our close collaboration with carriers such as Iberia, AviancaTaca, Kenya Airways or Turkish Airlines, “ comments Svend Leirvaag, Vice President, Industry Affairs, Amadeus. “Education is clearly one of the key drivers to make this support more efficient and durable –therefore we have also highly reinforced our projects in this area. At the same time we remained focused on improving our environmental performance and our cooperation with industry stakeholders."
