Tag Archives: NDC

Sabre Corporation announced the availability of Etihad Airways’ New Distribution Capability (NDC) content through Sabre’s global travel marketplace. The addition of Etihad Airways expands Sabre’s footprint of Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region based NDC airlines and broadens travel agencies’ access to real-time content based on offers and orders. Initially, the launch will be rolled out to agencies in Oman and Bahrain, allowing them to shop, book, and service the airline’s NDC offers, with a broader rollout to follow. By integrating and normalizing NDC offers, Sabre gives travel agencies and corporate buyers an efficient way to shop, compare, book and service Etihad’s NDC offers alongside the airline’s traditional options by using application programming interfaces (APIs), Sabre’s travel agency booking application, Sabre Red 360, and Sabre’s online booking tool, GetThere. The airline’s NDC content may include more personalized and diverse travel options, richer content, dynamic pricing, and more customized travel solutions that cater to an increasing demand for tailored travel experiences. “We are excited about the addition of Etihad Airways’ NDC content to our travel marketplace, which demonstrates our ongoing commitment to providing the content our customers want and the scalable capabilities they need,” said Jean-Vincent Teuler, Vice President, Airline Sales for EMEA region at Sabre. “This initiative highlights our dedication to innovation and to operating a compelling travel marketplace that provides efficient access to multiple sources of content, including NDC.” Sabre is one of only a few companies that provide NDC capabilities to address both distribution and airline IT needs. Recently, the company announced SabreMosaicTM, a new passenger service system (PSS)-agnostic offer and order-based airline retailing platform that will help accelerate carriers’ ability to create and retail dynamic, …

Travelport and Emirates announced that New Distribution Capability (NDC) content from Emirates and enhanced NDC servicing capabilities are now available in the Travelport+ platform. With this launch, Travelport’s agency customers will be able to easily view and compare more dynamic NDC offers and ancillaries from Emirates and create a more streamlined, personalized experience for travelers. Travelport’s complete NDC solution for Emirates also provides agents the ability to service NDC bookings, which includes modifications and cancellations. “Agencies using Travelport+ will now have access to better, more enriched content that is only available via the Emirates NDC channel,” said Adnan Kazim, Deputy President and Chief Commercial Officer at Emirates. “The integration of our systems will strengthen the expansion of our reach across the global travel retail community and allow them to offer travelers more choice among our best-in-class products and services.” “We are leading the way in delivering Emirates’ NDC content to travel retailers and giving agents the ability to compare and book the best offers and ancillaries available from Emirates on Travelport+,” said Jason Clarke, Chief Commercial Officer, Travel Partners at Travelport. “This pivotal NDC milestone with Emirates proves Travelport is at the forefront of modern retailing with our ability to provide the best content and cutting-edge tools that agents require to create superior booking and servicing experiences for their customers.” Travelport’s NDC content and servicing solution for Emirates has first become available to all agency customers located in Australia, Indonesia, the United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom. Access to Emirates NDC solution in Travelport+ will expand to agency customers located in additional countries in the coming weeks.

Oman Air has unveiled a significant enhancement to its distribution capabilities, ushering in a new era of convenience and choice partnering with Accelya. The airline has introduced cutting-edge functionality that will enable its trade partners to seamlessly manage their customers’ travel needs. Part of the airline’s ambitious retail transformation programme, it leverages the latest IATA New Distribution Capability (NDC) technology, representing a substantial advancement from the previous booking tools available to travel agents. “NDC stands as a pivotal tool, empowering us with enhanced flexibility and control over our distribution channels. Oman Air’s NDC journey has yielded significant growth in recent years and our partnership with Accelya marks an important milestone in this journey,” commented Con Korfiatis, Chief Executive Officer of Oman Air. “Not only does the new upgrade support us to streamline our customer experience and enable us to scale up and provide more robust services, it also represents a significant reduction in our distribution costs, paving the way for more efficient operations and revenue diversification.” Sam Gilliland, Chief Executive Officer at Accelya, added “We are delighted that Oman Air has chosen Accelya to take control of their retailing future and help them on the journey to Offer & Order transformation. More and more airlines, covering a range of scale and operating models, are choosing Accelya’s FLX Platform due to our track record of delivering fast, impactful results. Our partnership with Oman Air is an example of how Accelya is leading the market in modern retail solutions and bringing the benefits of our technology to customers across the travel industry.” In addition to enhancing its distribution capabilities, Oman Air is bolstering its loyalty system, also powered by Accelya, with enriched …

Almosafer announced the expansion of its partnership with Amadeus into new verticals at the Arabian Travel Market. As part of the broadened collaboration, Almosafer will integrate Amadeus’ NDC (New Distribution Capability) technology, to help drive the industrialization of NDC, ensuring that all actors make the most of the benefits of NDC, through the distribution of new differentiated and relevant content. The collaboration will enable Almosafer to deliver more customized and targeted content and enhanced digital marketing capabilities by leveraging Amadeus’ accurate data analysis. The expansion of the long-standing partnership between the two companies is testimony to Almosafer’s commitment to accelerate travel retailing through innovative technology. By leveraging their IT and distribution synergies, Amadeus NDC [X] programme fosters cross-industry collaboration between airline and travel seller partners, enriching and enhancing customer experience on the travel agencies’ side while allowing airlines to tailor offers using latest merchandising techniques. In keeping with Almosafer’s focus on being future-ready and providing a seamless experience for their customers, the updated collaboration will enable the travel company to further boost their implementation of NDC-enabled Travel API solution to target more personalised products to customers. Tarique Khatri, Chief Commercial Officer of Almosafer, said: “At Almosafer we have always been at the forefront of harnessing the power of technological innovations to drive customer satisfaction. Our holistic association with Amadeus over the years has enabled us to offer travellers a seamless experience across our digital portals and with the addition of Amadeus’ NDC technology we hope to further our ambitions to provide more targeted personalised content for our customers.” Jamel Chandoul, SVP Travel Sellers, Middle East, Africa, Türkiye, and Central Asia at Amadeus: “Our mission at Amadeus is to make the travel …

China Eastern Airlines has signed a milestone agreement with Amadeus for international NDC distribution. The deal sees the carrier become the first in the Mainland of China to sign for NDC distribution worldwide with Amadeus. Javier Laforgue, Executive Vice President, Travel Unit & Managing Director, Asia Pacific, Amadeus, says: “China Eastern Airlines is an important and valued partner. The agreement signed today is a milestone for Amadeus, expanding our presence in the key Chinese airline market. The deal deepens our collaboration with China Eastern Airlines and will provide our global network of travel sellers with the ability to easily search, shop, and service product offerings from the airline.” With NDC technology, China Eastern Airlines will be able to provide richer, customizable content to travel sellers, supporting better upsell of its branded and ancillary products. With access to the full range of unique offers and product attributes, travel sellers across the globe will be able to grant travelers enhanced choice, provide best-in-class customer service, resulting in an improved traveler confidence. Travel sellers will, meanwhile, have further access to enriched China domestic airline content. Fu Jian, Vice President, Commercial Development, China Eastern Airlines says: “We want to provide our customers around the world with more choice and personalization when booking travel with us and NDC is one of the key enablers to do this. It is also an important initiative for China Eastern Airlines to accelerate the recovery of international traffic and enhance the expansion of its overseas sales channels. As an innovative leader in the travel technology space, Amadeus is a significant partner for China Eastern Airlines. We look forward to working with Amadeus to expand our reach around the world.” China …

At a recent exclusive interview with TravelTV Middle East, Alan William Chief Strategy Officer Satguru Travel shared that upskilling the staff is important with new technologies such as AI and NDC. He reiterated, “Travel is a very personal business irrespective of what AI pops out today if you do a ChatGPT and what it pops out today, do you really believe it? I think there is a lot more for AI to go and if you read all the management books they always say to take AI with a pinch of salt and that’s what we are also doing. We are very much aware that technology will be there but when packages are formed they still need human intervention. I come from a generation when computers were introduced they didn’t kill jobs but the skills of the people need to change to adapt to the new requirements it’s a service industry people are needed but it’s a different breed of people that are needed. Upskilling is very important take for example a travel consultant five years ago his job was to issue a ticket and ensure those tickets were issued but today with NDC coming in and the amount of ancillaries the staff has to know.”

Travelport and Qatar Airways  announced that Qatar’s NDC content and enhanced servicing capabilities are now available in the Travelport+ platform. Travelport customers can easily search and compare NDC offers from Qatar Airways, as well as service NDC bookings, which includes modifications and cancellations. Travelport+ enables agency customers to access a wide range of rich content, fares, and unique offerings from Qatar Airways all in one place, enhanced by the Content Curation Layer (CCL). This Travelport+ feature minimizes manual tasks using powerful artificial intelligence (AI) and machine-learning (ML) capabilities to provide agents and travelers a more modern retailing experience with faster search response times, highly relevant results, and greater accuracy. “Our NDC collaboration with Travelport ensures that travel agents around the globe can effortlessly shop and book our growing repertoire of NDC offers and provide exceptional service to our customers, including post-ticketing,” said Matt Raos, Senior Vice President, Global Sales at Qatar Airways. “Qatar Airways has long been committed to bringing our agency partners along on the NDC journey, so we’re pleased to extend our NDC offers to Travelport subscribers.” “Now that Qatar’s NDC content is available on Travelport+, our agency customers will have the ability to view and compare more dynamic offers and ancillaries from Qatar Airways so they can create a more streamlined, personalized experience for travelers,” said Jason Clarke, Chief Commercial Officer, Travel Partners at Travelport. “We’ve built our NDC solution to empower travel agents to operate as modern retailers and provide the level of service that travelers need beyond the point of booking, so that our partners benefit from more upsells and greater loyalty from their customers.” Travelport’s NDC content and servicing solution for Qatar Airways has …

Travelport announced that it is One Global Travel’s preferred Global Distribution System (GDS) partner. As the only GDS provider to One Global, the international community of leading independent travel management companies (TMCs) formed by World Travel Inc. and Clarity Business Travel Management, Travelport will provide access to retail ready content and superior search, shop and servicing capabilities delivered through the Travelport+ platform. One Global TMCs will also benefit from Travelport’s complete New Distribution Capability (NDC) solution, which empowers agents and travel managers to easily compare offers side-by-side and seamlessly service NDC bookings for their travelers. “At One Global we are 100% committed to building trusted and transparent relationships with our suppliers that bring true value to our international community of TMC partners,” said Polly Smoothy, Global Supplier Partnership Manager at One Global Travel. “Travelport is our preferred GDS partner of choice to deliver a broad range of travel content and technology tools.” “Business travel expectations are changing drastically, and employees want the ability to book and manage their work trips quickly, easily and with more control. That is why we designed Travelport+ to help TMCs operate as modern retailers and give travelers more self-service options,” said Paul Broughton, Director of Business Development, EMEA and APAC at Travelport. “Our partnership with One Global will drive modern retailing forward in the corporate travel sector, providing TMCs, their clients and business travelers with greater personalization, more convenience and truly modern experiences.”  

Virgin Atlantic and Travelport announced a renewed agreement. The deal includes distribution of all Virgin Atlantic content, including, subject to implementation, future distribution of NDC through the Travelport+ platform. This renewed agreement strengthens the ongoing travel retailing relationship between Travelport and Virgin Atlantic, ensuring that Travelport-connected agencies have continued access to Virgin’s most robust, enriched content in the Travelport+ platform. Additionally, Virgin Atlantic is using Travelport’s complete branding solution to enhance the way products and ancillaries are displayed on agents’ screens with rich graphics and detailed descriptions, so that agents can seamlessly shop, compare and personalize options for travelers. “Our renewed agreement with Travelport, along with Virgin Atlantic’s future delivery of NDC content, illustrates our commitment to drive value and deliver modern retailing experiences for the agency community and our travelers,” said Juha Jarvinen, Chief Commercial Officer at Virgin Atlantic. “Travelport+ offers retailing and merchandizing capabilities that ensures travel retailers can provide our customers with more choices and the best options from Virgin Atlantic.” “With this new deal, we will support Virgin’s modern retailing strategy with NDC collaboration and Travelport+ capabilities that make it easy for agents to search, sell and service the best offers,” said Jason Clarke, Chief Commercial Officer, Travel Partners at Travelport. “Our long-standing partnership with Virgin Atlantic will bring more value to the industry as we focus on delivering the seamless experiences agents need to provide travelers with personalized offers and the superior service that they expect.”

Travelport Worldwide Limited announced that a group of its existing equity holders and lenders have agreed to invest $570 million of new equity financing into the Company. The new financing will give Travelport a robust capital structure, enable further investment into Travelport’s technology platforms and pave the way for other innovations to deliver new and exceptional ways for the travel industry to serve customers. The new investment in Travelport is being made pursuant to an agreement that will significantly deleverage and strengthen the Company’s balance sheet (the “Transaction”). Following completion of the Transaction, Travelport will have a new ownership structure composed of Travelport’s existing equity and credit investors, including Elliott Investment Management, Davidson Kempner Capital Management, Canyon Partners, Siris Capital and other leading institutional investors. These investors will remain well positioned to provide strategic counsel and support to the Company’s management. “This investment demonstrates our investors’ support for Travelport and will advance our mission to reinvent a better future for the travel industry,” said Greg Webb, Chief Executive Officer of Travelport. “With this new investment, Travelport will have a strong balance sheet with the least amount of debt amongst its peers, which we believe will put the Company in an even better position for long-term, profitable growth. Most importantly, this Transaction will further strengthen our operating business and accelerate our investments in Travelport+ and other initiatives that make us the most innovative and agile partner to all our customers. We thank our investors for their significant vote of confidence in Travelport.” In the last year, Travelport has undertaken several successful strategic investments and initiatives to enhance the technology, products and services it provides to customers. These include the acquisition of …