Travel companies can unlock hidden revenues with smarter cybersecurity – Amadeus white paper

As the online channel becomes increasingly dominant in our business and personal lives, the risk of account takeover or identity theft are ever greater. This creates a significant burden for companies: today, cybercrime costs the victim company an average of 2.6 million dollars per incident.

The Amadeus white paper, Cybersecurity as a lever for revenue growth: Why Information Security matters to the Chief Commercial Officer, also reveals that this threat can actually be turned into a commercial opportunity, allowing companies to manage data security to improve the customer experience, grow their reputation, reduce risk exposure and ultimately improve the balance sheet.

Some of the white paper’s key findings include: 

• Companies can use security initiatives to improve their customers’ experience and drive greater sales on their websites.
• There is a significant opportunity for airlines to unlock hidden revenues by reducing the number of valid transactions which are blocked by ineffective fraud management
• Storing sensitive data as tokens allows travel companies to eliminate sensitive data altogether from their organisations which greatly reduces the burden of meeting regulatory obligations.
• Automating fraud management controls can not only reduce the level of fraud, which a company is exposed to, but also reduce the hidden cost of fraud.

Juan Torres, GM Amadeus EA said: “Data security presents complex challenges to the global travel industry and East Africa is no stranger to this reality. At Amadeus, we believe it can also be a lever for growing top line revenues, but also an opportunity to improve customer service.  With Cybersecurity as a lever for revenue growth we explore the mindset and initiatives required to realise this opportunity.”

A core recommendation of the paper is that companies take holistic approach to data security. Juan Torres continued: “To achieve the revenue opportunity, data security cannot be the domain of a single department but span the whole organization, with conversations across and beyond silos. We have developed this white paper with the explicit aim of driving these conversations between data security professionals, IT heads and commercial executives of our Travel Industry partners.

Travelstart, an online travel agency from South Africa, and one of the paper’s key contributors, has leveraged data security technology on their mobile app to vastly improve the payment experience. Stephan Ekbergh, CEO and Founder of Travelstart Group, commented: “It shouldn’t take you as long to book a flight from Cape Town to J’burg as it does to fly there.  With our new Flapp app our customers have gone from over 30 clicks to just 2 to book and pay for this trip, saving them valuable time.” To simplify the payment process in Flapp, Travelstart had to store their customers’ credit card details, which they convert to secure “tokens” with the help of Amadeus.

The white paper also includes contributions from data security specialists including GlobalDataLock.com, Hold Security and Frost & Sullivan.

Aiming to inform and stimulate an industry conversation on data security and commercial opportunity, Cybersecurity as a lever for revenue growth brings together analysis and real world examples on data security, the rising impact of fraud, and the response of the industry.

To download the white paper, please visit http://www.amadeus.com/blog/29/10/safeguarding-information-systems/