Airline Direct Selling Through Travel Agencies May Prove Its Worth After the Crisis
Skift Take
A crisis brings out either the best or worst in people. Technology is no different, and so-called New Distribution Capability could have a new lease of life.
The airline technology standard called New Distribution Capability was developed to allow airlines to sell rich content and ancillaries directly to customers. There were growing pains, as it initially angered global distribution systems which were being bypassed — most airlines thought they were charging them too much for distribution. The travel agencies were meanwhile forced to create workarounds to keep this new type of booking data in their systems for their corporate clients.
There’s been more collaboration, with mutual benefits, in the past few years though an emerging tier of startups now stepping in to decode the standard into a simple application programming interface for travel sellers to plug in to.
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Despite some wangling about commercial models, it’s a dream scenario for global trade body the International Air Transportation Association, which concocted the
