Demystifying NDC

Abstract

Since the 1960's the world’s travel industry has been dependent on the Global Distribution Systems (GDS) to price air-fares, aggregate content, combine airline schedules and availability into combinations accessible to travel agents. Over time, the accessibility was filtered to and other channels and this further grew into the aggregation of hotel and car content.

Digitisation enables airlines to excise more control over the content they want to display to the customer, un-bundle products and charging supplements for seats, bags, meals etc. Historically, the GDS has not offered the same level of control and flexibility and many airlines see New Distribution Capability (NDC) as an enabler to deliver better and richer content, although whether the end result proves to deliver a cheaper or better alternative to traditional GDS content remains unknown.

Subsequently, the legacy technology providers in the aviation ecosystem have commenced numerous forums to focus on what the ultimate dynamic pricing mechanism will showcase itself to be, however, there is still no definitive timeline determining the grasp in which airlines will move to a new formidable platform which is more accurate, robust and efficient.

There has been a transcendence with the emergence of the low cost carrier models, however, the plight to revolution against the distribution incapability comes at a price – inefficient revenue optimisation and a cascaded effect of air fares in the market.

This paper is not averse to adopting a new thought process and embracing new technology, but the intent is more inclined towards levitating the control and distribution back to the airline on how best to model its distribution capabilities and optimisation strategies and not be curtailed to one-dimensional eco-system where in orchestrated layers of convolution continues to exist, thereby derailing their propensity to optimise.