Students get a peek into the ‘real world’

By Amy R. Remo
Philippine Daily Inquirer


AMADEUS PHILIPPINES has found a way to prepare travel and tourism students for “real work” in the “real world,” while they are still in school.

And that is by forging long-term agreements with some of the country’s top colleges and universities to provide their students with e-learning courses that would train them in using the global distribution system (GDS).

Amadeus Philippines general manager Albert Villadolid said it had forged separate agreements with De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde, Far Eastern University, Lyceum of the Philippines University, San Sebastian College, University of the Philippines and University of San Jose Recoletos.

Under these separate agreements, Amadeus Philippines will provide all its partner schools with a wide range of e-learning courses that will be used in the training of college students on the intricacies of the travel and tourism industry.

In particular, the students will be trained to use the Amadeus GDS, a system, which is being used worldwide to book hotel reservations, airline flights, insurance and rent vehicles.

Students will also learn to use the hotel management systems and SMS systems for bookings.

“We expect our partnerships with some of the country’s leading schools to create a steady pool of globally certified travel professionals, trained in using the most widely deployed global distribution system in the world,” Villadolid noted.

In a related development, the company also said that Enderun Colleges, the Philippine affiliate of Les Roches International School of Hotel Management in Switzerland and the Alain Ducasse Formation in France, have entered into a similar partnership with Amadeus Philippines for the training of its students on the use of the Amadeus Property Management System (PMS).

The Amadeus PMS is directly linked to the Amadeus GDS and includes its inter-hotel chain communication capability and e-mail confirmation facility.

Villadolid said that the Amadeus platform was the popular choice among travel agencies, airlines, hotels, cruise liners and car rental companies.

Amadeus is the world’s leader in providing the travel industry systems solutions to manage the distribution and selling of travel services, covering 217 markets around the world.

It is the technology partner of 94,162 travel agency locations, 764 airlines, 76,814 hotel properties, 17 cruise lines, 43 rail companies, 11 ferry companies, 44 travel insurance providers, 22 car rental companies serving 36,000 locations and 1,000 corporations to optimize their distribution and internal operational requirements.