distribution system (see p26-29) – the birth of alliances, giant Middle Eastern carriers and non-GDS carriers just for starters. Airlines’ content used to be fairly simple: there were limited fare classes (how many letters of the alphabet are there?), three fare levels (high, low and off season), and one product with which to transport someone from A to B with baggage, seat and refreshment included. Of course, the quality of the seat and refreshment might vary between first and economy class but you get the picture. Most importantly of all, full content deals were standard for corporates. Demand has become much more like any other retail experience, with travellers – and their travel departments – now expecting to tailor what’s on offer to what they need. Consumers now face much more product and price choice and expect fare pricing to be dynamic but the ability to access this full content via airline partners is no longer taken for granted. Some content has become more accessible – easyJet content is available on GDSs via an aggregator’s API. “You can get extras so long as the GDS, aggregator or OBT has made it available,” explains Marchant.
But, as with any retail product, the air product is not just the travel itself. It’s also about service. This can be especially frustrating for corporates because of their volatile itineraries. Parexel’s senior director of procurement and travel, Ben Park, sums it up: “If you call customer service to change your flight and they pick up the phone within four hours, you’re lucky. If nothing needs changing fine, but if you need to change, it’s terrible.” SERVICING THE BOOKING The challenge is summarised by Lufthansa Group’s head of channel partners, Johannes Walter. “NDC is capable of most servicing – refunds, exchanges – but it seldom occurs because a travel agent needs to run a capable system.” A key consideration for corporates and their TMCs is the limitation on what’s involved in servicing itinerary changes such as refunds and reticketing because their mid and back-offices are powered by GDS technology. Ann Cederhall of LeapShift explains: “Few of the network airlines’ NDC solutions are direct connects meaning there is intermediary technology and you are not connecting with the PSS (passenger service system) which adds additional cost.”
Ian Luck, head of airline distribution at travel tech specialist T2RL, endorses that view and highlights two other issues. First that “a lot of large airlines have done significant distribution deals with the GDSs and as part of those deals airlines connect the NDC pipe to the GDS”. In addition, he highlights the issue of dynamic or continuous pricing and the demand for fares to be calculated in real time. “It doesn’t work in the old technology, only in NDC,” he says. Dynamic pricing is in demand but it is not new, as Yanik Hoyles, IATA’s distribution director, points out: “A lot of business travel takes place on LCCs so [corporates] are already using dynamic pricing.” IATA acknowledged that many of its members were eager to sell content that could not be accommodated easily on the GDS. Distributing content via a means other than the GDS could also change the source and size of their distribution costs. Carriers wanted a new, direct distribution option – for example through their own API – to distribute their new offers rather than be constrained by the historical categories ordained by the legacy GDS architecture. Lufthansa moved the dial in September
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SPRING 2023 | businesstravelnewseurope.com
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