NDC Future-proof distribution


to add multiple segments, make multiple changes, issue refunds. “The large airlines are very engaged in


this, are really listening to the travel agent community and their needs.” The more players who use the standard


the better, he insists: “We should not spend effort integrating other versions of NDC. The industry should move together.”


The process of adoption It’s all well and good to have a standard, says Pisanello, but adds: “You need to make sure your systems have the capability, the performance level to handle very large transaction volumes.” The Amadeus GDS currently handles close to one million passenger name record (PNR) transactions a day. That is on top of 750 million flight searches across travel agents, OTAs, metasearch and airline websites. Its systems can handle 100,000 end-user


transactions per second – meaning anything from a fare search to a credit card authorisation – and, on a peak day, 3.9 million bookings. Yet NDC will ratchet up those volumes


100-fold. Pisanello says: “The order of magnitude changes. NDC connections have 100 times the transaction volume, and response times are critical. We know a leisure consumer won’t wait long if there are no results. At Amadeus, we are able to deal with these response times.”


You need to make sure your systems have the capability, the performance level to handle very large transaction volumes


The latest version of NDC is not the final


version, of course. There is now an NDC 18.1 which is important in a different way to 17.2. “It generates itself automatically, when


previous versions were manually created,” says Pisanello. “You need NDC to be fully automated to industrialise” – that is, to develop at scale. He says: “We are piloting 17.2 with a number of airlines and travel agencies, working towards the goal of having the first industrial version available for use next year. “We might implement version 17.2 and


jump to version 19. I don’t see any major changes after version 19 – changes after that would be incremental. “It should be available by the end of the first quarter next year, but not as a graphical-user interface. The graphical-user interface version should be available by the end of the second quarter.


“The big TMCs and other leading travel


SMARTPHONES are more prevalent than any other device (Figure 20) and the preferred device for browsing


(Figure 21), as online access via mobile continues to grow (Figure 19, previous page). However, internet penetration may have peaked, with daily access


stalling or falling (Figure 18). Over the page, Italy shows the EU’s highest rate of retail browsing (Figure 22), but the UK the highest rate of e-commerce (Figure 23). Laptops and desktops remain the preferred devices for purchasing (Figure 24).


FIGURE 20: ACCESS TO DEVICES: 2017 % of adult population


% 100


20 40 60 80


0 78%77%75% 85% 69% 43%45% 52%51% 45% 72%71% 66%68% 61% 51%50% 51% 39% 47% 0 0 +3 -4 +1 -6 -5 -8 -12 -4 -3 -8 -12 -6 -8 -12 -8 -14 -12 -14


Change on 2016


10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80


0 Smartphone Tablet Laptop 18 | Travel Weekly Europe Report 2018 Desktop Smartphone Desktop/Laptop Source: Ofcom


sellers are helping us to make sure we build it the right way. Once that is in place, it will be a question of how ready airlines, TMCs and agencies are on their side to deploy it. “We will engage with a lot more agencies and airlines next year. We’ll have pipelines [for implementation] and people will be in queues. It will take a number of years, but we should have results next year and 2020 will be a breakthrough year.” At that point, he says: “Content will all be in one place – typical GDS content, NDC


BROWSING TIME: 2017 Average hours per month


FIGURE 21: ONLINE 75 58 66 62 52 21 22 27 21 25


Germany France UK Italy US


hours


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