...says Peacock Travel CEO

This weekend, on October 21, Amadeus celebrated an important milestone in our company’s history: we turned 30 years old… or 30 years young.

At Amadeus, we pride ourselves on helping our customers all over the world improve the travel experience for billions of people for the past 30 years.

To celebrate 30 years of innovation, collaboration and better journeys, we have chosen some of our top travel agents, who have been in the industry for years, to share their journey with us…

We chatted to Peacock Travel and Tours’ CEO and Chairman of Peacock Group, Aare Segun Philips about his experiences over the last 20 years in travel.

Peacock Travel has been a leader in the industry for over 20 years, how has the journey been so far?

It’s been interesting and challenging! Years back, we used to go to the airlines’ offices for reservations or we would make phone calls to confirm our bookings. But today, Amadeus has made things really easy. The evolution since the GDS has come into the market has been great: from reservations to manual tickets then to e-ticket

Amadeus turned 30 years in October, how did Amadeus and Peacock begin to work together?

Our journey with Amadeus dates back over 20 years. We were the first in Nigeria to use Amadeus. We trained all our staff with Amadeus. We were also the first Travel Agency to use the online platform provided by Amadeus. Amadeus has always been number 1 for us.

There’s literally no travel without Amadeus for us with our many offices across Nigeria and also outside Nigeria. We have over 250 staff, who all trained in using Amadeus. The support has been so overwhelming that I don’t see myself using any other GDS.

How do you cope with competitors?

If you don’t have passion for something, there’s no point doing it in the first place. We take professionalism very seriously and make sure our staff are trained regularly. We live by this quote: “If you think training is expensive, try ignorance!”. That means we invest a lot on our staff.

What are your ambitions for the future?

We plan to expand more into various other countries. We already have IATA licenses on Cargo; we plan to be bigger and open more offices in other parts of the world, bring in some partners and expatriates.

This note was written by Amadeus Africa Team