When will NDC really start to make a difference at corporate travel points of sale? Maybe next year. That’s when Amadeus expects to start testing its New Distribution Capability solution with corporate agencies, and when Travelport expects to provide agencies complete content aggregation in a single workflow. A first step for Travelport, planned for this summer, is a… Read More »
When Lufthansa Group in mid-2015 informed the market of a new distribution strategy, one stated objective was to lower associated costs. The company expects to prove wrong the skeptics and start achieving that by the end of 2018. Lufthansa’s financial reporting does not offer enough detail to completely validate progress, but there are indicators of short-term pain for… Read More »
According to published reports in Europe, Lufthansa Group on April 5 began discounting by 20 euros some short-haul economy-class roundtrip fares when booked through direct or NDC-enabled channels. This is on top of the 16 euro surcharge Lufthansa, Austrian and Swiss currently apply on bookings through global distribution systems, effectively more than doubling the disadvantage in traditional, indirect… Read More »
The news that an activist investor took a stake in Travelport to push a possible sale of the company has analysts, consultants and industry leaders speculating about the possibilities. Could the GDS be broken up and sold to its two Western rivals? What about keeping it whole and selling to China-based TravelSky? Is there a wild-card buyer out… Read More »
Amadeus is reorganizing its travel agency and corporate business lines to focus on global customer sectors rather than geographies. Two of its more recognizable execs in North America are leaving. Amadeus SVP of travel channels Decius Valmorbida said the departures of North America COO Vic Pynn and chief marketing officer Scott Alvis, while “difficult” decisions, were natural outcomes of… Read More »
[UPDATE, March 30, 2018: As expected, Travelport and Air France KLM reached a new “private channel” deal. So did Amadeus. As a result, users of the Amadeus and Travelport global distribution systems can enter into deals with the airline group to avoid the distribution surcharge Air France KLM plans to apply, effective April 1. According to statements attributed… Read More »
Amadeus put together a new unit focused on IATA’s New Distribution Capability. Called NDC-X, it’s led by Amadeus VP Gianni Pisanello. “We have been involved in NDC for quite some time,” Pisanello said. “We were the first to bring NDC into production in 2014, with United Airlines. We were waiting for a certain maturity in the market and… Read More »