Keeping up to date with airline distribution technology has turned into ‘Whack A Mole’, according to BTA chief Clive Wratten. Ian Taylor reports
Frustration at the fragmentation of corporate travel distribution was not far below the surface at the Business Travel Association (BTA) conference in Gibraltar at the beginning of this month.
BTA chief executive Clive Wratten captured the underlying tension – as leading network airlines push along different paths at differing rates towards new distribution capability (NDC) technology – when he told the conference: “There is so much infighting. The industry has been in the middle of a civil war.”
The war has been going on since 2012 when Iata began developing an NDC technology standard for distributing fares and ancillary content via online APIs (application programme interfaces) rather than the 1980s fare-filing system EDIFACT which feeds global distribution systems (GDSs).
At first, it appeared NDC was aimed at driving down GDS distribution costs and perhaps bypassing the GDSs altogether.
Now GDSs provide access to NDC content alongside other technology providers. But that has not halted the conflict. British Airways partner American Airlines withdrew more than 40% of its fares from GDSs in April last year, restricting full content to NDC channels despite many travel management companies (TMCs) and agents lacking access and difficulties servicing bookings for many with access.
The carrier performed a U-turn this June, admitting: “Our approach has driven customers away.”
Wratten described attempts to address the fragmentation as “like Whack a Mole”, suggesting “every time a TMC pulls something in” to its booking system “it pops up elsewhere and the supplier says ‘You’ve got to have it here’.
“TMCs are tired of it. This needs sorting out.”
Iata has insisted all along that NDC is simply a technology standard, but it has led to limited standardisation.
The head of a leading TMC told Travel Weekly: “The Iata standard was not really a standard at all. Airlines are all working on their own NDC APIs and when you bring them in [to your system], you have to standardise [the content].”
He added: “The Iata goal also wasn’t about moving everything from here [EDIFACT] to there [NDC]. It was about moving some of it. So, of course it’s messy.”
In fact, Iata declared its goal in 2019 was for 21 member airlines on its NDC ‘leader board’ to have “at least 20% of their sales powered by an NDC API by 2020”. The timeline slipped, but Iata has 330 members.
Wratten said: “We don’t hear at all from Iata about NDC now. I think they recognise it’s not what they wanted it to be.”
He told the conference: “Airlines have a right to go direct to the customer. But they need to recognise there is demand for a TMC to have access to the full supply chain. This is [about] price parity.
“Over 90% of corporate managed travel [in the UK] is handled by people in this room. We all have the same problem. We have to change this.”