# Amadeus Executive Argues Travel Industry Must Prioritize Openness Over Proprietary Control
Decius Valmorbida, president of travel at Amadeus, believes the travel technology industry has built itself backwards. Rather than competing on closed, proprietary platforms that lock travelers and partners into single ecosystems, Valmorbida contends the sector should cooperate on shared technical foundations while competing on service and experience.
The stakes matter enormously for travelers booking flights, hotels, and vacation packages. Today's fragmented landscape means airlines operate separate booking systems from hotel chains, which operate separately from tour operators and travel agencies. This creates friction, hidden inventory, poor price transparency, and limited interoperability. When you book through one platform, you cannot easily access inventory or offers from competitors unless they've struck bilateral agreements.
Valmorbida's vision flips this model. Rather than each travel company building proprietary walls, the industry should establish open, shared technical plumbing. Travelers and travel agents would then choose which interface or platform to use, rather than being locked into a single provider's ecosystem. This allows genuine competition on user experience, customer service, and innovation rather than on who controls the most exclusive data or distribution network.
The Amadeus president's argument arrives as the travel tech landscape consolidates. Amadeus itself operates one of the world's largest global distribution systems (GDS), competing directly with Sabre and Travelport. These companies control much of how flights, hotels, and car rentals reach travel agencies and online booking platforms. Yet Valmorbida suggests this layer of control, while profitable, ultimately constrains the entire ecosystem from reaching its growth potential.
This thinking reflects broader industry trends toward API-first architecture and open standards. Companies like Booking.com and Expedia built massive advantages partly through integrating thousands of hotel and airline partners via standardized connections. More recently, blockchain advocates have championed decentralized protocols for travel inventory, though adoption remains limited. Tech firms increasingly recognize that ecosystems with open standards (think the web itself, or email) grow faster than closed platforms.
The Skift Global Forum, held in September, will test whether Valmorbida's vision holds water among his competitors. Can rivals in the GDS space, online travel agencies (OTAs), airlines, and hotel chains actually cooperate on shared technical foundations? Historical precedent suggests resistance. Companies benefit enormously from proprietary control and have little incentive to level the playing field unless forced by regulation or market demand.
Yet traveler behavior is shifting. Consumers increasingly expect seamless experiences across platforms. They search multiple sites, compare prices instantly, and abandon bookings when friction appears. A truly open travel tech infrastructure could deliver that seamlessness more efficiently than current siloed approaches.
Valmorbida's real bet is that the pie grows large enough that even companies sacrificing some proprietary advantage benefit from the overall expansion. More bookings, faster transactions, lower friction, and broader market participation could offset the loss of lock-in advantages. Whether Amadeus, Sabre, Travelport, and the OTA giants actually build those shared foundations together remains the defining travel tech question of the next five years.