Tag Archives: New Distribution Capability

Etihad Airways has become the most recent airline to partner with UK’s easyJet, one of the world’s largest airlines. This new partnership means customers can purchase tickets through the easyJet worldwide website connecting the two airlines’ networks and opening new and exciting possibilities for travel between Europe, Africa, the Azores and the UAE. The collaboration comes into effect immediately. The partnership follows easyJet’s accelerated and successful roll out programme with world-leading flight comparison search engine, Dohop, which powers the easyJet worldwide website connecting its European network with long-haul flights. For Etihad, this has been achieved using the NDC (New Distribution Capability) platform providing technical capability for new partnerships previously not possible. The partnership with easyJet and Dohop is the UAE national airline’s first use of this technology and Etihad plans to add more airlines and travel partners to their NDC portfolio in 2020. Ali Saleh, Vice President Alliances and Partnerships, Etihad Airways, said, “This new collaboration between two great brands is a logical leap forward for both our companies. easyJet is a perfect launch partner for us in Europe, allowing us to reliably increase the breadth of our continental reach to and from Abu Dhabi, as we enhance ways of connecting directly with more airlines and travel partners around the world.”  Rachel Smith, Head of Commercial Partnerships, easyJet, said, “We’re excited to announce our partnership with Etihad Airways, which opens up Abu Dhabi as a destination to our passengers and more of Europe to Etihad. Through smart self-connections and strategic partnerships, we continue to extend the reach of the worldwide by easyJet network offering more value and more routes to more customers.”

Travelport has reached a full content agreement with Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) under which the former will expand availability of PIA’s content to Travelport-connected agencies in the Americas and Asia Pacific, as well as continue to provide access across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. In doing so, over 68,000 agencies globally servicing hundreds of millions of travellers will now have real-time access to search, sell, and book the airlines’ full content and inventory. As the first global distribution system (GDS) to manage the live booking of flights using the International Air Transport Association’s (IATA) New Distribution Capability (NDC) technical standard, Travelport will soon further help PIA by giving it the opportunity to create NDC connections and display NDC-based airline content on its platform. Commenting on the new deal, Ali Tahir, Chief Commercial Officer at Pakistan International Airlines, said, “Travelport has been a valued partner to PIA for a number of years. By expanding our relationship with the company to cover the Americas and Asia-Pacific, two strategically important regions for us, we will provide our loyal customers with greater access to our flights and open up significant new growth opportunities for our business.” David Gomes, Head of Middle East, Africa, Turkey and Pakistan, Air – Travel Partners, Travelport, added, “PIA is highly valued by travel agencies in all corners of the world due it its vast international network, high quality service and large customer base. We are delighted the airline has chosen to expand its partnership with us. We are fully committed to supporting the company in achieving its international growth objectives and look forward to continuing to work with its world-class team.”

Gordon Wilson, the President and CEO of Travelport, highlighted the developments in technology shaping the travel industry. Speaking in Atlanta at The Beat Live, Wilson spoke about how indirect channels are embracing IATA’s New Distribution Capability (NDC) API. He announced that Travelport is on schedule to launch its first version of this capability into a production environment this quarter. He expressed caution about NDC on issues such as the relative speed of response compared to the fast and accurate response times provided today in the indirect channel and the different interpretations among airlines of the NDC API. This, he said, could push up the cost to serve and time to implement. Wilson cited the progress already made in enabling airlines to merchandise their content to travel agency and corporate travel channels, the speed at which new airline products can be introduced, and the capabilities allowing airlines to make personalised or tailored offers.

Amadeus has announced the creation of a dedicated programme to drive the industrialisation of New Distribution Capability (NDC) and ensure its success for all travel players. Created by IATA, NDC is an XML-based data transmission standard that holds huge promise for the travel industry, and will enable travel companies – from airlines to travel agencies – to evolve travel distribution and merchandising. The NDC-X programme will bring together experts from across Amadeus’ business to focus on practical use cases of the standard; adopting a test and learn approach to deliver improved capabilities for the industry. Gianni Pisanello, who has held a variety of leadership roles within Amadeus’ airlines business, will lead the new NDC-X programme. The aim is to create better journeys for travellers through the best use of technology, and this transversal program will work with the travel seller and airlines to deliver just that. In terms of commercial possibilities, a recent study by Phocuswright revealed that total gross bookings in the Middle East for air, hotel, car and tour services totaled $74 billion last year, with an estimated annual growth rate of eight per cent between now and 2020.

The first dual International Air Transport Association (IATA) New Distribution Capability (NDC) Certified travel technology provider unveiled that it will be launching ihlah.com – Middle East and Africa’s first Travel Search Engine, by the second quarter of 2017.  ihlah.com is a travel search website accompanied by top-ranked mobile Apps for travellers living in the Middle East & Africa region. “Ihlah.com is Africa & Middle East’s Region’s first Travel Search Site targeting a market of 482 million Internet users in the region and 232 million passengers who travelled by air. We help travellers with a comprehensive browsing experience to compare flight and hotel options and pricing from various suppliers while keeping shoppers engaged in a single tab. Ihlah.com presents an unbiased comparison of all travel products and prices offered in the marketplace by merchants both local and global and enables shoppers to quickly find the best deal and place to book, whether from airline, hotel direct or with a third party aggregator website. Ihlah.com harnesses powerful yet simple to use technology based on IATA’s New Distribution Capability (NDC) that automates the process of searching and comparing results from hundreds of airline, hotel and online travel agency websites,” said Praveen Kumar, Chief Technology Officer of TPConnects. For registered users, to search and compare travel products on ihlah.com will be offered as free of cost, while it works on a Cost Per Acquisition and/or Cost Per Click business model with airlines, hotels and online travel agencies.