While airlines are still adjusting their attitudes toward IATA’s New Distribution Capability, Sabre has changed its tune about how the communication standard will present new opportunities around retailing.
"A lot of the initial rhetoric around NDC was it’s a GDS killer,” says Kathy Morgan, vice president of product management at Sabre Travel Network. "But in reality, as content becomes more fragmented, aggregation becomes more important."
The message from Sabre at its Technology Exchange in Dallas this week is that by enabling NDC, airlines benefit from product differentiation and time-to-market, access to rich air content and a consistent shopping experience.
As a travel tech company, Sabre views its position as essential in order for NDC to be successful since it “spans the entire travel ecosystem,” Morgan says.
And to help it succeed and bring more airlines onboard, Sabre has unveiled plans for a Digital Airline Commercial Platform, an end-to-end personalized retailing product the company claims is the first of its kind in the industry.
Quelling concerns
Morgan stresses that for airlines hesitant to embrace NDC, they need to view it as a “tech-enabler of intelligent retail” that removes a lot of friction around selling.
She adds that enabling NDC doesn’t necessarily replace traditional offerings but rather is just an additional source of content. “It’s not this content ‘or’ this content; it’s ‘and,’” which is how the content is available in the GDS.
It’s admittedly a long road to get airlines onboard – Morgan says it’s the “last leg of an intelligent retail strategy,” but “enabling capabilities from a GDS perspective holds airlines accountable.”
Subscribe to our newsletter below
She says airline APIs are good at initial shopping and offer and order creation, but work needs done to service, manage and account for that data.
She says Sabre, too, has improvements to make on its end around passenger name records – particularly on divided PNRs.
Still, she sees the NDC push as an “enormous opportunity” for standardization. “Let’s grow the pie,” she says. “Let’s stop fighting over pieces of the pie and get relevant content that can be consumed by all.”
Sabre has previously conceded that it was International Airlines Group's shift to an NDC-led connection to intermediaries that pretty much ended any lasting resistance from tech providers last year (it was one of the more vociferous opponents of the program) as it became apparent that a number of major airlines were going to forge ahead with the IATA-led project.
U.K., Ireland and Benelux managing director, Eric Hallerberg, told PhocusWire in February this year that despite concerns over the potential shift in the commercial model that NDC could create, global distribution systems such as Sabre needed to find a way to push forward and beyond the rhetoric that dogged the first few years of the project.
Digital overhaul
The company's new Digital Airline Commercial Platform introduces upgrades to the SabreSonic passenger service system and AirVision commercial planning product and will include deeper integration across NDC-enabled offer and order management.
For SabreSonic, Dave Shirk, president of Sabre Airline Solutions, says it’s the “most advanced release in SabreSonic history” and the first major upgrade in seven years as it reimagines agent and customer interfaces to offer a consistent experience across channels.
He says the platform will offer ultra-fast shopping – in some tests as much as 25 times faster – as well as omni-channel tools with an emphasis on mobile. The open system will be deployed in the cloud and give airlines more flexibility and a richer set of APIs for better personalization.
For the AirVision component, Vinit Doshi, senior vice president and CMO of Sabre Airline Solutions, says Sabre is adding “brains” to the fare manager that will strategically find fares as well as those of competitors and customers’ willingness to pay.
The rollout for the Digital Commercial Platform will start in Q4 of 2018 and will be built on Sabre’s open Microservices hub.
* This reporter's attendance at the event was supported by Sabre.