The letters "NDC" still elicit antipathy from much of the traditional travel agency community. But one sector of the industry that is embracing the modern merchandising technology is air consolidators.
"I really think the future of consolidation depends on NDC," said Eren Aksoy, COO of Picasso Travel. "The airlines offer their best prices on NDC, and consolidation means that you are providing the best prices to travel agencies so they can make a few dollars."
Eren Aksoy
In 2023, 12% of airline bookings settled by ARC were NDC-enabled. While that figure was up from 6.7% a year earlier, uptake among corporate travel agencies and traditional leisure agencies remained scant: OTAs accounted for 95% of those NDC-enabled transactions.
Consolidators, though, are bucking the trend. Industry stalwarts Mondee, Picasso Travel, Downtown Travel and Sky Bird Travel have each incorporated NDC fares into their booking engines. GTT Global, also one of the largest U.S.-based consolidators, couldn't be reached for comment.
The most recent large consolidator to integrate NDC was Sky Bird, which went live last month in its Wings booking engine with NDC-enabled fares from 14 airlines, among them American, United, British Airways and the Lufthansa Group carriers.
Norm Knowles
"NDC isn't just a new way of booking; it's a paradigm shift in travel, providing you with more personalized, efficient and exclusive offerings," Sky Bird CEO Norm Knowles said in announcing the enhancement. "This means not only better deals for your clients, but also a smoother, more responsive booking experience."
In an interview, Knowles said that Sky Bird had delayed NDC implementation until now because of the complexity of integration, which took approximately a year and cost millions of dollars.
The increasing deployment of NDC-only fares and ancillary products by a variety of airlines, most notably American and United for the U.S. market, caused Sky Bird to take the plunge.
"It has certainly become obvious that there is going to be more and more unique content available," Knowles said.
Mondee, which is the largest U.S. air ticket consolidator, having bought competitors Hari World, Transam, Skylink, Cosmopolitan and C&H over the past few years, expanded its NDC capabilities last summer after American began pulling 50% or more of its content from legacy GDS channels, vice president of sales Lali Kumar said.
Picasso was an early NDC adopter, Aksoy said, having gone live with Lufthansa NDC-enabled content approximately a decade ago. The company now sells NDC content from 20 airlines, with most integrations having taken place over the past three years.
Steven Borukhin
Downtown Travel, said chief development officer Steven Borukhin, began developing its NDC capabilities several years ago, but went live with the first NDC content in its TheBestAgent.Pro booking tool in 2022, in conjunction with the U.S. launch by Amadeus of its NDC solution.
In general, consolidators are now integrating NDC content in their booking engines through a combination of GDS connections, direct connects with airlines and connections via NDC aggregators.
Downtown Travel, said Borukhin, has direct connects with 14 airlines. He said airlines typically offer more NDC content via direct connects than they do in the GDS or with aggregators.
"Given the type of business we run, we're just chasing after the lowest fares," Borukhin said.
Many of the travel advisors and travel agencies that are loath to adopt NDC cite post-ticketing servicing challenges as well as inconsistencies in servicing capabilities from airline to airline, among their primary concerns. Those shortcomings are an ongoing challenge for consolidators, as well.
"Each airline has its own philosophy and servicing," said Picasso Travel's Aksoy.
While some offer automation for tasks such as exchanges and refunds, others require Picasso to call them.
However, Aksoy noted that those challenges are dealt with by Picasso, not by travel advisors booking through Picasso's Cockpit booking engine.
Sky Bird COO Raj Patel said that every airline has different capabilities for automated NDC servicing. Common challenges include post-booking splits of multiparty records and ticket reissues.
Singapore Airlines, British Airways, American, Finnair and Lufthansa Group airlines are among the carriers that consolidators identified as having more thorough NDC servicing capabilities.
In the first weeks of Sky Bird's NDC rollout, executives said, the consolidator encountered significant resistance from longer-tenured travel advisors, who are more comfortable with the legacy GDS environment.
"Getting to a place of enabling more self-service tools for them and the customer is critical to getting it to maximum scale," Knowles said.
Other consolidators, however, say that advisors booking via their consolidator booking engines will almost always choose an NDC-enabled fare if it's less expensive than a legacy GDS fare.
Lali Kumar
"No question they will pick the NDC price even if it's $10 cheaper," Aksoy said.
Consolidators also conduct training to make sure that advisors understand NDC and how to service NDC bookings.
Mondee offers an especially extensive network for training, Kumar said. Last summer, the consolidator, which books flights, hotels and rental cars through its App.Mondee.com booking engine, did a 28-city tour geared toward educating travel advisors about NDC. Mondee will stage a similar tour this summer.
"At the end of the day, it's the agents who have to accept it," Kumar said.