LANGLEY, U.K., Oct. 23, 2018
/PRNewswire/ -- Travelport (NYSE: TVPT), the leading travel
commerce platform, has become the first GDS operator to manage the
live booking of flights using the International Air Transport
Association's (IATA) New Distribution Capability (NDC) technical
standard.
The first transaction was made by a British agency, Meon Valley
Travel, on Friday 19 October for a short-haul low-cost flight from
London to Milan issued by a major European carrier. It
was managed on the latest Travelport Smartpoint agency point of
sale. The new capability allows bookings to be made for any
services on the airline without incurring a surcharge. It is the
first of a series of products Travelport is developing to
accommodate changing airline distribution methods.
The airline industry has been developing NDC since 2012 with the
aim of extending customisation to agents and establishing closer
relationships between airlines and customers. Travelport already
offers Rich Content and Branding, now used by over 270 airlines and
currently distributing over 339 ancillaries for 90 carriers.
Travelport's new NDC capability is enabled using similar XML
connections to those Travelport already deploys with APIs for over
20 low-cost carriers.
Travelport published a Roadmap for its initial range of NDC
products in February, having been the first GDS operator in
December 2017 to acquire Level 3
certification from IATA as an aggregator. This status is necessary
for any organisation seeking to provide vital offer and order
management functions. Over the next few months the first
version of the NDC capability launched this week will be used by a
steadily increasing number of agencies and airlines as part of the
NDC rollout. It will also be followed by a series of product
enhancements, including a version for online agents in 2019.
Given the complexity of the technology, Travelport has pledged
to continue to develop these products in consultation with a wide
range of agencies and airlines globally.
Gordon Wilson, Travelport's
President and CEO, said: "This is a landmark moment for airline
distribution. We are delighted to have taken a lead in bringing the
NDC era to life. It has required an extraordinary amount of skill
and expertise to make this happen and I want to thank my own
colleagues at Travelport as well as those at our partners. We are
still at the very earliest stages of NDC deployment. Its evolution
will continue to take time as we learn from the practical
experience of its first use. Meanwhile, we continue to offer a
comprehensive global travel commerce platform capable of handling
mass volumes of searchable and bookable content at speed for the
world's travel providers and agents."
Aleks Popovich, IATA's Senior
Vice President, Financial and Distribution Services, commented:
"Congratulations to Travelport for managing the first NDC-enabled
booking through its platform. This is a significant step toward the
new era of airline retailing. We look forward to continuing to work
with Travelport as it advances NDC-enabled products in the coming
months and years."
Colin Boddy, Corporate Director
at Meon Valley Travel, added: "We are proud to be the first agency
to make an NDC booking using our preferred GDS channel. We have
always been at the forefront of technology and are honoured to have
been chosen as a partner for this landmark moment."
NOTE TO EDITORS: An image showing the first NDC booking taking
place is available on Travelport's media center. Further
information on NDC can be found on Travelport's dedicated online
hub.
About Travelport (www.travelport.com)
Travelport (NYSE: TVPT) is the technology company which makes
the experience of buying and managing travel continually
better. It operates a travel commerce platform providing
distribution, technology, payment and other solutions for the
global travel and tourism industry. The company facilitates
travel commerce by connecting the world's leading travel providers
with online and offline travel buyers in a proprietary
business-to-business (B2B) travel marketplace.
Travelport has a leadership position in airline merchandising,
hotel content and distribution, car rental, mobile commerce and B2B
payment solutions. The company also provides critical IT
services to airlines, such as shopping, ticketing, departure
control and other solutions. With net revenue of over
$2.4 billion in 2017, Travelport is
headquartered in Langley, UK, has approximately 4,000 staff and is
represented in 180 countries and territories.
Travelport Investor Contact:
Majid Nazir, FCA, Head of
Investor Relations
T +44 (0) 1753 288 857
M +44 (0) 7552 212 129
majid.nazir@travelport.com
Travelport Media Contact:
Julian Eccles, VP PR and
Communications
T +44 (0)7720 409374
julian.eccles@travelport.com
Other Travelport media contacts are listed here.
IATA Media Contact:
Justina Balnaite
T +41 22 770 2479
balnaitej@iata.org
Meon Valley Travel Media Contact:
Colin Boddy, Corporate
Director
T +44 (0)116 264 5279
ColinB@meonvalleytravel.co.uk
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SOURCE Travelport Worldwide Limited