NDC for personalised experiences

New Distribution Capability (NDC) has become an integral part of the travel journey, as it helps in personalising experiences and bridging the gap between two parties. NDC’s features are improving the relationship between airlines and travel fraternity, making it more acceptable to travel agents. Kathryn Wallington, Head of MEA, UK&IE, Central & Eastern EU, Travelport, shares details with TRAVTALK.

TT Bureau

How does NDC improve the relationship between airlines and travel agents?
When NDC is applied in a way that values indirect channels, travellers can quickly and easily find that perfect option that feels personalised to their needs. We see that NDC is pushing travel toward its modern retailing era.

Could you share the key benefits of adopting NDC for travel agents and their customers?
NDC presents an opportunity for agents to benefit from access to more competitive offers from airlines, more personalisation, and better merchandising.

What challenges do travel agents face in implementing NDC, and how can these be addressed?
NDC is implemented differently by every airline. Travel agents often see duplicated content on screen, have to do extra technical work or open multiple tabs to compare products like-for-like. There is also a servicing aspect for NDC-sourced content that seems to have been de-prioritised or overlooked entirely. Agents need to be able to quickly process a refund or exchange without having to point customers to the airline to manage changes. Effective NDC solutions need to be built with agency and traveller needs in mind, and not just focus on the airline community. That is why at Travelport, we are laser focused on delivering complete, end-to-end retailing solutions, rather than interim NDC solutions that restrict agents from being able to fully service travellers post-booking.

Are there possibilities for travel agents leverage NDC to offer more personalised and dynamic travel experiences?
NDC was created to give airlines the opportunity to create distinctive and unique air offers that are personalised and customised for individual customers. This is essential to modern retailing as we know it, because travellers want to be able to easily find and purchase the products we want.

Will you be able to share the role technology providers play in helping travel agents transition to NDC?
Widespread adoption of NDC makes content distribution and aggregation more important than it ever has been. Over the last couple of years, the volume of trip searches has grown five times and we expect to see trip search volumes double their pre-pandemic peaks over the next year. Very few agencies can deal with the complexity of potentially hundreds of simultaneous connections to assemble the best possible itinerary. They need the right technology to ‘normalise’ NDC content and ensure content can be easily viewed and compared side-by-side with other sources of content, including ATPCO, EDIFACT and LCC. That is why travel retailing and distribution platforms like Travelport+ are becoming more valuable than ever to be able to quicky (as in milliseconds) sort through an increasing volume of nuanced supplier content options, analyse the choices, then curate and promote those that are most relevant.