The rate of progress on new distribution capability (NDC) technology has been called into question, with senior GDS figures clashing over whether most of the technical challenges have been solved.
Sabre head of corporate accounts for the UK and Ireland Richard Viner told the Corporate Travel Summit in London last week: “In six months, we won’t be talking about NDC because every GDS will have all the fare categories with all of the content.”
He told members of the Business Travel Association (BTA) and Advantage Global Business Travel: “In six months’, it will be solved.”
Viner said the issues facing the sector are now “about fare parity, not about NDC”, saying: “What customers are asking us is, when are you going to deliver fare parity?”
NDC is the technical standard for distribution of airline content via intermediaries. But airlines and intermediaries are at different stages of developing NDC capabilities while leading carriers increasingly make many fare categories only available through NDC-enabled channels or direct.
Global distribution systems (GDSs) can increasingly provide NDC content to travel management companies and agencies, but access requires upgraded technology and agreements, and servicing NDC bookings can remain a challenge.
Jack Ramsey, chief executive of travel management data-processing tech company TripStax, suggested: “What airlines want to put in front of agencies, they can now.”
But Kyle Moore, general manager of Travelport corporate travel booking software division Deem, disagreed. He told the conference: “I would love to believe we won’t be talking about NDC in six months. But I don’t believe that.”
Moore argued: “Corporate travellers don’t know what an NDC fare is – they don’t use it.”
Paul Dear, Concur regional vice-president for supplier services in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, described “an omnichannel approach” as essential and said: “The clever part is aggregating [content].”
However, Ramsey argued “Aggregation is the easier component. You can go to the airlines, to the GDSs, to rail providers.
“The problem comes with [having] more and more aggregators and with the offline/online world we still have not got on top of. How do we get to a stage where we stop trying to manage complexity in the background and concentrate on the front end?”
Pat McDonagh, chief executive of Clarity Business Travel, insisted: “There are still big challenges around aggregating and curating content, and that is what corporates want us to manage.”