Articles

STILL CONFUSED ABOUT NDC? YOU'RE NOT ALONE

by Michèle McDonald
October 07, 2013

Some 19 months after IATA revealed its plan for what came to be called the “New Distribution Capability,” and despite countless articles in the trade press on the topic, there is only one way to describe how the travel industry feels about NDC.

Confused.

A year ago, IATA members approved Resolution 787, which lays the foundation for NDC. Last week, as he has many times in the year since, Eric Leopold, director-passenger at IATA, sought once again to dispel the myths surrounding NDC at The Beat Live, a conference that attracts travel management company executives and corporate travel managers.

Leopold addressed questions that had been submitted by subscribers to The Beat. The questions included issues such whether marital status would be included in criteria submitted to airlines for the formulation of offers; the collection of passenger data; the future of fare filing, and transparency in shopping.

Transparency in shopping
On that latter question – transparency in shopping – Leopold said: “You will know what you are paying for at time of shopping. Everything will be in your shopping basket.”

Travel agents will be able to present customers with a variety of offers, from different airlines, that are designed to appeal to the individual traveler based on the information he or she provides, he said.

But he stressed that “anonymous shopping,” in which no personal details are provided, will continue to be an option.

Marital status is the only data point included in IATA’s Resolution 787 that is not already provided to airlines when customers book on airline websites. But airlines don’t have to ask for it and customers don’t have to provide it, Leopold said.

Ambiguous language
That such questions are still being asked is due in part to the language of Resolution 787, which is occasionally unclear and ambiguous.

The questions are also a testament to the aggressive lobbying campaign waged by the Business Travel Coalition, which has taken advantage of those ambiguities to try to convince travel agents that NDC will violate privacy rules and end transparency and anonymous shopping.

BTC also recently suggested that in the event of a terrorist attack, travel agents will not be able to access customer PNRs to make changes. Leopold categorically denied that, adding that in the NDC environment “nothing will change” in terms of agency access to PNRs.

Heated discussion
Although Leopold’s session was titled “The Hot Seat,” it wasn’t until the next day’s GDS panel that things really heated up.

All three GDS executives on the panel – Scott Alvis, chief marketing officer of Amadeus; Brian Houser, Sabre Travel Network vice president of product, and Scott Hyden, managing director of the Americas for Travelport – said they were in favor of technical standards.

“But we had a number of issues with Resolution 787,” Alvis said. “We would like IATA to come back and amend it.”

IATA has proposed that the U.S. Transportation Department approve Resolution 787 with the following conditions:

Resolution 787 does not require disclosure by any passenger of personal information of any kind; does not mandate that airlines or intermediaries distribute products and services via the new XML data transmission standard; does not restrict the use of any other data transmission standard, including the existing EDIFACT standard, and does not establish a particular business model for the marketing or sale of air transportation.

Satisfactory solution?
Asked whether approval of Resolution 787 with those conditions would satisfy them, the GDS representatives responded with silence. Pressed for a response, Hyden, who does not manage Travelport’s relationship with NDC, said he was not the appropriate person to answer that question on behalf of the company.

The three executives noted that they were moving forward with their own merchandising solutions.

Noting that NDC envisions a five-year timeline for full implementation, Houser said that “airlines are not interested in a five-year timeline.” He said Sabre, for example, already is enabling the sale of US Airways’ Choice Seats.

That’s when the audience jumped in.

Jim Davidson, chief executive officer of Farelogix, noted that Choice Seats sales were enabled 19 months after the agreement for it was signed. “It took forever,” he said. “It would take 40 years to do the Top 10 airlines at that rate.” (This reporter is not sure about his math.)

The real issue with NDC
What is arguably the root cause of the division on NDC was finally addressed when Hyden said the NDC discussion was “a commercial discussion wrapped in technical standards discussion.”

While NDC is, in fact, simply a set of XML messaging standards that airlines can use to maintain inter-operability when they choose to distribute through third parties, it could also affect – perhaps profoundly – commercial relationships among airlines, agencies and GDSs.

That is a topic that IATA, as a trade organization, cannot directly address. It is leaving that discussion to the marketplace, and that is why there is so much contention: Some players want to preserve the existing commercial model. Others simply don’t like the unknown.

Davidson began a response: “Put the commercial model aside.” But Chris Vukelich, vice president of supplier relations at Egencia, countered, “You can’t say, ‘Put the commercial model aside.’”

Therein lies the rub.