Travelport announced the incorporation of New Distribution Capability (NDC) content with its suite of connections for airlines and agencies this week.
In a statement noting it had become the first GDS to achieve certification as an Iata NDC Level 3 Aggregator in December, Travelport said: “The company is now industrialising its NDC capability.”
The company said: “These products will allow travel agencies to connect through Travelport’s platform in a single workflow combining traditional content and new NDC content.”
It said NDC content would “form part of an initial set of products as follows: an industrialised connection for airlines that connects via NDC-standard APIs [and] a point-of-sale companion application for travel agencies that offers NDC-enabled content alongside the GDS workflow in our leading Travelport Smartpoint desktop.”
Travelport promised: “This integrated app will be ready in the second half of 2018.”
The company said it plans to follow this with “a first fully integrated search, book and manage function, combining NDC-connected content and GDS content in the same workflow”.
Travelport said: “This will be offered to travel agency customers on the latest Travelport solutions including Travelport’s next generation API Trip Services.
“This integrated display and search response will be the foundation for all future releases, through API and desktop.”
The company said it “expects to announce the first of many NDC-enabled airline partnerships very soon”.
Travelport chief commercial officer Stephen Shurrock said: “We are extending our range of products ready for the new mixed-economy era of airline distribution, building on our NDC Level 3 status.”
“We intend to . . . deliver the broadest range of bookable content to our customers.”
IATA NDC programme director Yanik Hoyles said: “We congratulate Travelport on its progress in developing products for this new era following its achievement as the first GDS to become NDC Level 3-certified as an aggregator.”
Travelport president and chief executive Gordon Wilson said: “This should give our customers reassurance.”
He told Travel Weekly: “You will see this in Europe first.”