Going beyond NDC: Answers to your questions

In February this year, 600+ airline, agency and corporate representatives along with key industry influencers joined Sabre for a webinar titled Going Beyond NDC: A Q&A with Sabre and Partners.

During the event, Kathy Morgan, vice president of NDC at Sabre, was joined by two Beyond NDC partners: Neil Geurin, director of distribution strategy at American Airlines, and Nicola Ping, manager of air content and distribution at Flight Centre Travel Group.

They discussed how they’re collaborating across segments to implement NDC solutions and how Sabre is accelerating its Beyond NDC strategy in 2019.

We caught up with the three execs after the webinar to answer some of the top audience questions we didn’t have time to address live on the call (we had almost 100 questions come in from those tuning in during the event!).

How is Sabre planning to handle travel agency workflows in an NDC world?

Kathy: Sabre is committed to minimizing disruptions in the end-to-end workflow. We are starting with service enabling a set of APIs including NDC content to facilitate shopping, booking and fulfillment.

As our capabilities evolve, we will integrate into the Sabre Red 360 workflow and ensure mid- and back-office processes are supported.

NDC standards are still evolving, so we are active at industry meetings and working closely with airlines to understand how current gaps may impact agency and airline success. 

Will NDC improve agency accessibly to airline content, where agencies won’t be limited to ticketing only in their BSP/ARC region?

Nicola: Some airlines are differentiating the content available via NDC and traditional channels.

NDC also offers airlines the ability to make offers relevant to Point of Commencement, rather than just Point of Sale, with the ability to pay in your local currency.

One of the great benefits to corporates is that if their agency has a “follow-the-sun” policy for servicing, availability and fare will be based on where the journey is commencing, not where the servicing agency is based.

The tickets are issued by the airline but still need to be in the country associated with the currency of payment, as today this is determined by the IATA/ARC identifier.

What is the role of ATPCO/SITA exchange and Next-Generation Storefront (NGS) in driving NDC adoption?

Kathy: ATPCO has formed a NGS industry working group, where Sabre is actively participating and advocating to create an industry standard of data to describe “like-type” airline products and services.

Sabre is delivering initial shopping results that include carriers’ complete product lines, including NDC offers, ensuring Sabre-connected travel agencies, online travel agencies (OTA) and other third parties can provide better information to help travelers choose the offer that is right for them.

It seems several carriers have simply used NDC as an excuse to remove content and charge fees for content. Isn't NDC designed to be more efficient vs. fragmented content?

Neil: Carriers typically have three major strategies for NDC – cost savings, driving incremental revenue and enhancing the customer shopping experience. 

Every carrier prioritizes those slightly differently. At American Airlines, for example, we are primarily focused on making transactions easier for the customer wherever they want to shop.

When we do that well, we expect it will help us win incremental revenue and potentially save some costs.

At American we are focused on implementing with partners who want to utilize NDC for the efficiencies it provides to let us all serve customers better and expand the pie.

If both GDS and NDC air content are used for shopping, pricing and ticketing, at what stage during booking will the GDS or airline interact with the OTAin terms of commission, segments and ancillaries?

Nicola: Because traditional GDS content will remain for a long time, the role of the GDS will evolve to become an aggregator of content from multiple sources.

The GDS will offer the content presented by the airline at all stages of the booking - a mix of flights alone, or flights plus ancillaries - depending on what has been requested.

Once the booking is made, the aggregator will take the request from the seller and send that to the airline to respond.

If that booking includes commission, that information will be displayed in the response and then paid via the BSP/ARC, as today.

Any changes to the booking will be requested by the seller, via the aggregator and actioned by the airline.

How will interline offers be managed in a NDC world?

Kathy: There are two key considerations to keep in mind. The first is that a single airline, the “Offer Responsible Airline” (ORA), is responsible for each Offer returned to the Seller or Aggregator, despite another partner airline being involved in the Offer.

Second, it’s the responsibility of the Seller or Aggregator, by accessing data in the Airline Profile, to identify which markets an ORA has in their extended network.

Customer data is distributed across multiple systems and owners. How does the airline consolidate data to better understand the customer and personalize offers?

Neil: Consolidating data is critical to designing products and services and optimizing offers to customers.  It’s a major focus for many airlines.

Whether it’s looking at transactional histories, loyalty data, service interaction or other customer touchpoints, many carriers are working to consolidate views into central repositories to allow for fast, seamless access to that information for future offer systems.

Traveler profile and loyalty services are missing in NDC schema today. How are these requirements addressed?

Nicola: Some traveler profile information will be passed directly through to the NDC messages. Ensuring that the right information is passed at the right stage is a key role of the OBT/TMC and aggregator.

For example, the loyalty information needs to be passed when shopping for a flight and ancillaries.

The travel policy will filter the results and then the preferred payment passed at the Order Change stage.

To ensure that the true value of NDC is realized, while remaining within corporate travel policy, it’s essential that the aggregator, TMC and OBT work together.

If identified elements are missing, we will work closely with IATA to define them.

Two passengers booking separately through the same agency may have completely different requirements. How will the airline personalize the offering to each passenger?

Neil: Airlines tend to be blessed with lots of information about our customers, and over time we expect that many airlines will personalize offers to individuals using that data to simplify a customer’s shopping process.

When no data is available, personalization will likely be limited to like-customers, using aggregated factors such as channel, route and/or day of week.

Sabre has recently announced that it has NDC APIs available for end-to-end workflows. Learn more about these APIs and how Sabre is innovating Beyond NDC with key stakeholders across the industry.