Leading travel players join NDC initiatives

More industry partnerships for Amadeus and Sabre as they drive forward their respective NDC initiatives

Sabre has enlisted four travel companies as launch partners of its Beyond NDC initiative, one of whom has also joined Amadeus’ NDC-X programme.

The four launch partners of Sabre’s Beyond NDC initiative are American Airlines, American Express Global Business Travel (Amex GBT), Carlson Wagonlit Travel and Flight Centre Travel Group.

More industry partnerships for Amadeus and Sabre as they drive forward their respective NDC initiatives

Along with Sabre, each of the four companies will participate in the solution design process, leverage beta testing capabilities and establish their position as drivers of NDC.

Sabre said in a statement that it will announce additional participants in the Beyond NDC programme throughout the remainder of this year and beyond.

Dave Shirk, Sabre president of travel solutions, said: “Launching this programme with such heavyweights illustrates that we are looking past the near-term goals of NDC to define the future of intelligent airline retailing at scale in both direct and indirect channels.”

Beyond NDC is Sabre’s collaborative innovation initiative chartered to drive the industry forward through the development, integration and testing of end-to-end capabilities to process NDC-enabled offers and orders.

Meanwhile, Amex GBT will also help pilot Amadeus’ NDC-X programme.

The managed travel company will use Amadeus’ solution to test and familiarise itself with the new NDC flow of “shop, order, pay”.

This is expected to help prepare Amex GBT for implementation of the industrialised version of the solution, which will include servicing capabilities, come 2019.

The deal between Amex GBT and Amadeus will also give the former access to NDC content, in addition to GDS content.

Amadeus’ NDC-X brings together all NDC initiatives across the company – as an IT provider and an aggregator – and Amadeus is working with several airlines and travel sellers to drive the adoption of NDC across the industry.​

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