Business Travel Executive, June 2018

Business Travel Executive JUNE 2018 21 The ABCs of NDC IATAs New Distribution Capabilities promise more creative links between airlines and travel buyers NOTE On April 12 Business Travel Executive hosted The ABCs of NDC Harnessing new distribution capabilities to empower your air travel program the latest in our Going Deeper webinar series This follow up article provides a more indepth look at the topics covered in that webinar To hear the webinar in its entirety visit businesstravelexecutive com ed Using the word new may be a time tested business strategy but its often as much a matter of marketing as of real change However in this instance that doesnt seem to be the case with New Distribution Capability NDC While the initial set of standards from IATA goes back to 2015 the latest developments show increasing momentum for this innovative approach to distribution By the end of 2017 a total of 50 airline NDC deployments had gone live with more carriers planning to follow suit in 2018 and beyond according to Yanik Hoyles IATAs director of the NDC program And of 196 airlines IATA surveyed last year 113 indicated they planned to deploy or already had deployed the standard up from 86 in a similar survey conducted in 2016 Also bringing momentum to NDC has been last falls release of the 172 standard Building on feedback from early adopters this release includes significant restructuring work and thus provides notable improvements over previous releases and has been well received by the industry he says Hoyles notes it has been recognized by major technology companies including the three global distribution systems as providing a baseline benchmark for industrialization In addition last year all three GDSs committed to achieving Level 3 NDC certification the highest level attainable by the end of 2018 NDC is really about transferring the creation of the airline offer price price plus ancillaries bundles etc from the GDS source to the airline says James K Davidson CEO of Farelogix Davidson refers to this as the airline owning and controlling the offer and says this is the biggest impact of NDC Based on the type and amount of information willingly provided in a search request ranging from anonymous to authenticated the airline will instantly create an offer for that request Depending on the airline a variety of relevant offer options may be returned in the search response Davidson predicts these options will vary over time as more airlines fully By Mark Rowh