Bundeskartellamt clears takeover of TravelTainment by Amadeus
19.09.2006
The Bundeskartellamt has cleared the planned acquisition of all shares in TravelTainment AG, Aachen, by Amadeus IT Group SA, Madrid (Spain).
The market affected is the German market for computer reservation systems (“CRS”) used in the package holiday industry. Although Amadeus already holds a strong position in this market, this will not be further strengthened by the merger. No market share addition is to be expected because the search software provided by TravelTainment for online travel agencies and for Internet portals for direct online sales by tour operators (the so-called Internet Booking Engine (“IBE”)) do not belong to the CRS market.
In addition, the concentration will not significantly strengthen Amadeus’ financial power, nor will it improve its access to CRS sales markets or eliminate potential competition. The possibility to offer bundled packages (IBE and CRS) does not noticeably increase Amadeus’ scope of action since other large CRS providers, such as Sabre, are already able to do the same.