The sale of ancillaries through NDC enables a more tailored shopping experience for corporate travelers, a more lucrative sales process for airlines, and a more efficient booking process for the travel booker and the company. With NDC, airlines can increase revenue opportunities through better promotion of the extras they have on offer, such as onboard Wi-Fi and airport lounge passes, but also ensures they are only offered to those travelers who don’t already get them included. The user-friendly environment created by NDC leads to lack of leakage as well as a much better tracking and reimbursement process.

According to David Weaver, Mgr. of Global Travel for the Bechtel Corporation, the technologies available in omni-channel distribution in NDC environments are much more flexible and can deliver more content and more services for travelers and corporations. Simple things like frequent traveler status can be communicated much better across the value chain, allowing TMCs to have a clear overview of who gets priority boarding, or which traveler is on the waitlist for priority upgrades.

In terms of duty of care and sustainability information, the current platforms aren’t moving fast enough to accommodate all the information needed to book a trip, according to Weaver. Is quarantine required? Is a negative PCR test required? Do travelers need to be vaccinated? With NDC channels, this information can be easily pushed to the travel agent or through the booking tool to inform the traveler. By creating a value environment through NDC, it also allows the travel booker to make better decisions, says Weaver. That value environment includes pertinent information.

Finally, NDC also has the potential to curb travel policy leakage, according to Weaver. He explains that the content an NDC, omni-channel or API environment can provide, is exactly the kind of content users are currently booking out of channel. “We need to do better to create a better experience,” says Weaver. If you build a good wheel, people will come and use it. NDC has the potential to create a better user experience and eliminate the need to book out of policy.”

With NDC, corporate shopping is no longer anonymous. At every step in the travel booking process, data is being gathered. The more corporate travelers access NDC content, the more airlines learn about the traveler’s preferences and shopping habits. The result? Personalized content. For example, if travelers regularly choose to pay for onboard Wi-Fi, the airline could offer it as part of their corporate deal creating added value and further enhancing the traveler experience. The real-time information available through NDC also greatly enhances duty of care as well as sustainability choices.

Neil Geurin, Managing Director of Digital Customer Experience and Distribution Strategy for American Airlines recently said it’s all about delivering what travelers want. “We know corporate travelers tend to need Wi-Fi and that pretty much every company is happy to fund it,” says Geurin. “The corporation also likely wins if its senior managers have speedy boarding and a premium cabin seat so they can be more productive. With NDC our corporate customers will be able to work with us to help define their experience with American.”

The feedback from buyers and TMCs, according to a recent survey conducted by the Business Travel Association was that aside from lower fares, nothing has changed for the traveler and very little has changed for the TMC.

So far, TMCs say that NDC has not yet enabled them to be more customer-focused, to better sell ancillaries, or to be more competitive. There has been no improvement to their offering, there is minimal opportunity for upselling, and instead of seeing business improvement, TMCs report more business process complexity.

Similarly, corporations that were hoping to benefit from better policy enforcement, greater cost control, better quality reporting, and increased traveler satisfaction were left disappointed.

Another huge obstacle is that airlines are moving at different speeds with NDC deployment. This has resulted in instability, according to IATA.

In short: NDC has not hit the spot quite yet. But that doesn’t mean all is lost. Quite the contrary.

Weaver explains that there has been some frustration on the slow pace of development. “We have the expectation that it should be there, and it is not yet. However, change of this scale is going to take time. We’re starting to see the NDC discussion with an omni-channel type of presence that pulls API content from suppliers and put it in the customers’ basket. That is happening already.”

According to Weaver, people need to understand that NDC can provide better and more ancillaries, more services and more critical information for the traveler and the booker. “That is what NDC can be. But demand pull from the customer will be critical to open the door,” he says.

Florian Mueller, Consulting Air Practice Lead for FCM US, explains that 2022 will be a pivotal year for NDC. “We know that NDC has the potential to fulfill the new and changed priorities of business travelers today,” he says. “NDC encourages innovation by creating greater flexibility and quicker speed to market, and that is exactly what we need in the current corporate travel landscape. 2022 will be the golden year for NDC to deliver on its promises and help rebuild a better and reimagined corporate travel space.”

To achieve this, Mueller urges the entire travel value chain to collaborate, as only by working together can we rebuild a strong travel sector. “This is why we are working closely with all stakeholders in the industry (major GDSs, payment providers, online booking tools, and leading airlines) to ensure our customers have maximized NDC benefits while ensuring FCM’s wide-ranging services continue in our customers’ distribution channel of choice,” says Mueller.