Meliá Hotels International has started rolling out Cytric Easy from Amadeus, letting its corporate travelers search, book and pay for business travel in Cytric Travel within the Microsoft 365 productivity tools like Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Outlook.
The hotel chain’s employees can share travel itineraries with colleagues over Microsoft Teams, and those colleagues can then book a “copycat" trip with a single click. This feature works even when teams are based in different locations.
As the first company in the world to deploy the new innovation, Meliá Hotels International expects to play an important role in shaping the ongoing development direction of Cytric Easy.
“We have a deep understanding of the business traveler, with over 180 city hotels worldwide and a specific program addressed to this segment, Business Travelers Benefits & Rewards,” José María Dalmau, VP of business development at Meliá, said in a statement. “As a global company, many of our employees travel across the world, so organizing travel is key consideration for us. Being able to find and book a flight, hotel or car without leaving Microsoft applications is a game-changer and we’re excited to be helping Amadeus further define new features for Cytric Easy.”
“Meliá employees travel frequently but they also have a deep understanding of the hotel industry. They’re the perfect initial partner as we make business travel simple with Cytric Easy,” said Rudy Daniello, EVP Amadeus Cytric Solutions. “In the near future we will harness more Microsoft assets so the system automatically recommends other people to connect with during a trip to a given location, enhancing the overall value of business travel. We believe it’s a step-change in how companies do travel.”
With Cytric by Amadeus now embedded in Microsoft 365, the company expects to alleviate toggling between applications, leading to improved productivity, a better employee experience and easier compliance with travel policies.
In the near future, Meliá employees will launch Microsoft Outlook calendar invites that populate relevant data before starting the search process, such as preferred departure location, destination based on meeting location and dates. Flight search results will show recommended options based on convenience, price, users’ preferences (for example, stop-over airports to avoid), corporate policy and the greenest options.
Amadeus and Microsoft first announced Cytric Easy in March this year, with the collaboration representing one of the first public milestones since the tech giants entered a strategic partnership to drive future innovation in travel during 2021.