Amadeus reinvests heavily in R&D, with a spend equivalent to its #3 competitor's total revenue. This creates a widening technology and product gap that smaller players cannot bridge, fortifying its market leadership and making it increasingly difficult for others to keep up.

Amadeus maintains its "gorilla" status by being beneficial to its ecosystem, acting as a variable cost for airlines and sharing economies of scale. The ultimate test of a great business is when competitors hate you but customers love doing business with you for the same reasons.

The stickiest software is critical but inexpensive relative to a customer's overall budget, like payroll services. This 'Goldilocks zone' makes the software too small a cost for C-suite review, yet too embedded to easily replace, creating a powerful moat.

When asked if AI commoditizes software, Bravo argues that durable moats aren't just code, which can be replicated. They are the deep understanding of customer processes and the ability to service them. This involves re-engineering organizations, not just deploying a product.

As AI and no-code tools make software easier to build, technological advantage is no longer a defensible moat. The most successful companies now win through unique distribution advantages, such as founder-led content or deep community building. Go-to-market strategy has surpassed product as the key differentiator.

Amadeus was formed by major airlines to create a neutral distribution system. This origin story provided immediate scale, credibility, and deep industry integration, creating a powerful competitive moat from day one that would be nearly impossible for a startup to replicate.

When airlines select an IT provider for their central nervous system, the provider's financial stability is paramount. Amadeus's strong balance sheet is a competitive weapon against more levered peers, as customers cannot risk their core operations on a financially unstable partner.

A key competitive advantage wasn't just the user network, but the sophisticated internal tools built for the operations team. Investing early in a flexible, 'drag-and-drop' system for creating complex AI training tasks allowed them to pivot quickly and meet diverse client needs, a capability competitors lacked.

AI travel agents will likely focus on top-of-funnel search but will still need an aggregator like Amadeus to access complex, fragmented industry data. Amadeus's core IT backbone remains mission-critical in any AI-driven travel world, securing its position.