IATA Is Listening to Agents with New Study on NDC Impact
by Michele McDonald /IATA plans to kick-start travel agency involvement with its New Distribution Capability (NDC) by collaborating with a coalition of agency groups on a study examining ways NDC can benefit agents.
The Coalition of National Travel Agent Associations, dubbed “The Group” by IATA, includes ASTA, ACTA, and agency groups in Australia, Brazil, India, New Zealand and South Africa.
Which came first?
IATA has faced a chicken-and-egg dilemma in getting travel agencies to participate in tests of the New Distribution Capability (NDC) schemas.
Although the whole point of the NDC exercise was to provide third-party distributors with access to the same merchandising efforts that airlines have on their websites, travel agents – the original “retailers” -- have been noticeably absent from NDC pilots.
Yanik Hoyles, IATA’s NDC program director, had urged the participation of agents in NDC pilots, yet no pilot so far has involved the end-to-end solution that travel agencies need to process a transaction.
That changed in October, when IATA released a complete set of schemas, the standard message sets that allow trading partners to “speak” the same technical language.
“With the full set of NDC ‘end-to-end’ schemas now available, this collaboration between IATA and The Group is a great opportunity to jointly understand the benefits and implications of NDC from the perspective of travel agents,” Hoyles said.
New guide to NDC
IATA has just released The NDC Implementation Guide, a 208-page document designed to illustrate how airlines and their partners can use the NDC standard, explain the details of the standard and show examples of how it might be implemented.
Hoyles acknowledged that the guide “looks at NDC primarily through the lens of the airline.”
But he added that IATA wants to integrate perspectives from other stakeholders, including travel agents, so “any feedback enabling the document to be enriched with multiple perspectives from the NDC-user community is most welcome.”
Understanding NDC’s impact
The new study will be conducted by an independent consultant to be appointed jointly by The Group and IATA.
It will undertake research and analysis in the following areas:
• Understanding the impact of NDC on agents from a business, technology and commercial perspective.
• Exploring options to overcome possible obstacles to successful NDC implementation by the parties within the travel value chain.
• Providing scenarios of the potential funding models for the transaction of air fares and airline ancillary products via the travel agent channel using the NDC standard.
The study will evaluate the issues from the perspectives of large, medium and small agencies, including both business- and leisure-travel focused agencies.
It will also seek the views of other players on the distribution value chain such as airlines, GDS companies, travel technology firms, and providers of corporate booking tools.
‘It’s about time’
For Jayson Westbury, chief executive officer of the Australian Federation of Travel Agents and a member of The Group, it’s about time.
At IATA’s 2013 World Passenger Symposium, he complained that the NDC project was moving too slowly.
Agents want access to the rich content promised by NDC, he said.
Westbury fears that, “The world will have moved on by the time we get it.” The industry “should just get on with it,” he added.
“We have to find a way to get this party started.”
Meanwhile, ARC also has produced an in-depth overview and analysis titled NDC and You.
Weighing in at a less ponderous 16 pages, it aims to provide “a succinct and easily understood explanation about various NDC-related topics with the objective of providing a basic level of knowledge to spur discussions between various travel industry stakeholders.”