While IATA's NDC promised to revolutionise airline distribution, its implementation has faced hurdles. Challenges range from technical integration complexities and data standardisation issues to overcoming pervasive industry resistance to change.
A recent American Express Global Business Travel report picks up the lack of alignment between airlines and agents when it comes to agencies’ implementation of the use of NDC Offers and Orders. “Transforming air distribution with NDC is a complex endeavour involving the entire travel ecosystem. Without a doubt, alignment is needed for NDC channels to deliver content in a way that fully meets the requirements of agents and travellers,” says the report, explaining that NDC content from airlines must evolve to meet important travel functionality must-haves.
Some of these must-haves are:
* The ability to clearly present NDC and non-NDC content from different airlines together, to let the traveller easily compare all offers and book the best policy-compliant flight and price combination.
* Airlines need to address booking complications, such as the inability to conduct a search by flight schedule, book one-way fares or mix restricted outbound with flexible inbound fares.
* Efficient servicing of bookings (book, modify, cancel, reporting, etc.) of ancillaries within the booking workflow and without having to contact airlines directly.
Ann Cederhall, Travel Technology Specialist at Leapshift (a company that develops Offer and Order Management solutions), told Travel News in an interview that she believed NDC had fallen well short of the original intention proposed by IATA.
“Firstly, IATA should have aimed for the standard to be available for everyone to access and contribute to. Working groups and participation automatically excluded start-ups and many stakeholders. So we have ended up with a lack of the industry input and the industry expertise with the ability to drive change and make decisions.
“I have been told that there are no Order Management or Content Management companies participating in the NDC Consortium, which I simply do not understand,” said Cederhall.
“Include those who already have the experience and learn from them!
“IATA should have aimed for Open Source and for the standard to be available to all stakeholders to access at no cost. Had IATA done this they could have achieved what they wanted sooner and ended up with one accessible standard instead of the participating companies and airlines pushing their own solutions. We have ended up with multiple NDC solutions, which is very problematic.”
IATA’s NDC project leader, Yanik Hoyles, said in a recent interview, that during the upcoming IATA AGM in October this year, the corporate travel community, which remains sceptical about the benefits the initiative will bring to the business travel sector, will have an opportunity to participate in discussions around NDC.
Said Hoyles: “We remain optimistic that, like the GDSs, corporations will be less hostile towards the notion of change. The cloud has gone. Past aggression and defensiveness have been set aside. Not everyone is happy, but we’re having constructive conversations.”
Similarly, Fergal Kelly, Travelport’s Vice President of Travel Merchandising and Distribution, said the NDC initiative had evolved to the point where IATA now understood the need to develop industry standards focused on serving the merchandising and retailing needs of all stakeholders in the travel value chain.
