Amadeus has announced a programme to drive the “industrialisation” of airline association Iata’s New Distribution Capability (NDC) standard.
The travel technology group unveiled a programme it calls NDC-X this week, to be headed by Amadeus vice president Gianni Pisanello.
In a statement to coincide with the UK Business Travel Show in London, Amadeus said NDC “holds huge promise for the travel industry and will enable travel companies to evolve travel distribution and merchandising”.
The company said the NDC-X programme would “bring together experts from across Amadeus and focus on practical use cases of the standard [and] creation of commercial possibilities to build on NDC”.
Pisanello said: “We are at a critical moment in terms of the development of the standard and the readiness of the industry.
“For NDC to truly take off, we need to create a real standard not only for the protocol itself, but also for how it’s implemented.
“We also need to ensure it responds to travel seller requirements and has the economics to drive investment.”
He added: “We recognise we have a responsibility to make NDC work for all travel players.”
Amadeus senior vice-president for Travel Channels Decius Valmorbida said: “The NDC-X programme is a strategic priority for Amadeus.
“We are dedicating the right resources and have appointed a strong leader with a proven track-record in the industry to drive its success.”
Amadeus airlines senior vice-president Julia Sattel added: “NDC holds great potential for the travel industry and is part of a bigger picture of digitalisation.
“We’re working hard to solve our airline customers’ technology challenges in merchandising, dynamic pricing and cloud servicing.”