Corporate travel stakeholders have made a call to buyers and sellers to get onboard NDC if they have not since IATA’s introduction more than a decade ago, adding that unfulfilled industry solutions will require a robust ecosystem and time to build it.
At the standing-room interactive breakout session – NDC and Modern Retailing: Elevating the Future of Corporate Travel in APAC – at last week’s GBTA APAC Conference in Singapore, Sabre’s Pallavi Madhavan, director, APAC products and tech consulting, reminded attendees leisure travel demand is simpler, whereas corporate travel bookings require “many changes” and “more servicing”.
Charlene Wee, general manager, distribution Singapore Airlines (SIA), added “corporate travel nuances differ with duty of care and back-end requirements”.
Hong Kong Airlines’ assistant president Gloria Slethaug acknowledged challenges such as solving interlining, providing PNR data for corporates and TMCs, and NDC enabling point-of-sale flexibility were very complex.
On the plus side, buyer Ajay Bhatt, group head – corporate services, Godrej Industries, noted NDC has the potential to add layers in the booking process and incorporate loyalty programmes, for example, and would like to see the gap between the leisure and corporate travel experience plugged.
He continued: “There is no option but NDC, which is still in a nascent stage of design despite being around for 10 to 12 years… and (it is important) for all stakeholders to be on it”. We (buyers) need to work with our TMCs to adopt it.”
Agreeing, Sabre and SIA said more services need to be included, there were some technical gaps, all stakeholders have to start even if NDC is not mature so that the system can continue to build to optimise aspects such as personalisation and transparency.
Describing NDC as a technical change, Wee said SIA is working with its partners to simplify the process, and noted that if the agency is not onboarded, the “TMC may not be showing but corporates are able to access it on the airline platform”.
