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.
This NDC connection to Qantas is the first by any GDS to the carrier and enables live bookings of NDC content to be made by selected agency partners taking part in the testing program, including ATPI Corporate Travel, Globetrotter and Travel Beyond.
Scott Barber, managing director Australia and New Zealand at Travelport commented: "Qantas shares our vision that NDC has the potential to enhance the travel experience for its customers, offering personalized and differentiated choice and seamless booking experience. NDC delivery is complex and requires collaboration from all parts of the travel industry. We value our relationship with Qantas and are grateful to our test agencies for partnering with us to ensure we deliver an NDC solution which makes the process of buying and managing travel continually better for everyone. The ongoing delivery of our NDC roadmap is a key part of this."
Peter Muller, international board director at ATPI Corporate Travel added: "It’s great to be part of the team pioneering NDC for the Asia-Pacific region. We’re pleased to see an aggregated workflow within Travelport Smartpoint which will enable our agents to continue offering high levels of service to their customers as we move into the NDC content era."
Having been the first GDS to make a live NDC booking in October 2018, Travelport has already connected to five European airlines’ NDC content. It will follow up with an API NDC connection channel through its Trip Service API with Qantas’ content.
