In September 2019, SAP Concur has completed the pilot of connecting NDC content from British Airways and Lufthansa Group airlines with SAP Concur Travel solutions – streamlining the end-to-end airline distribution process including shopping and business travel booking, among others.
Before the pandemic made travel practically impossible due to border closures and changing travel restrictions, the airline industry was witnessing the accelerating pace of corporate travel content distribution with the adoption of IATA’s New Distribution Capability (NDC), a travel industry-supported program (NDC Program) for the development and market adoption of a new, XML-based data transmission standard (NDC Standard).
Aside from transforming how air products are retailed to corporations, leisure, and business travellers, NDC addresses the industry’s distribution limitations such as product differentiation and time-to-market, access to full and rich air content, and a transparent shopping experience. Much like NDC’s objective of making the most relevant information accessible to industry partners, SAP Concur also aims to ensure customers can access essential travel information regardless of the source content.
As a leader in the industry providing relevant business travel content to customers, SAP Concur continues to expand partnership with airline companies for their NDC content to connect in Concur Travel. Two years, including the pandemic year, after making NDC content from British Airways and Lufthansa Group airlines available in Concur Travel, SAP Concur has announced the availability of United Airlines’ NDC content for all its customers through Select Access this week.
Enhancing SAP Concur Travel Solutions
SAP Concur has been working with major airlines such as Lufthansa, British Airways, American Airlines, and United Airlines to address its customers’ request of obtaining content and viewing bookings through the Concur Travel online booking tool or directly on the airlines’ websites via Concur TripLink solution. SAP Concur was able to make the content available by closely collaborating with the airlines, several early adopter TMCs, and TravelFusion.
TravelFusion, an early innovator in obtaining and normalising NDC content as well as aggregating non-GDS content for 130+ airlines and hotels, has been a long-standing partner of SAP. Leveraging TravelFusion’s technology, SAP Concur Select Access feature allows travel managers to enable content that isn’t available in the GDS. It also allows clients to enable an airline’s NDC content within Concur Travel.
For United Airlines, their NDC APIs will display United’s bundles of ancillary services, which customers can configure easily in Concur Travel, and are uniquely available through the NDC channel.
Charlie Sultan, SVP Global Content, Market and Supplier Strategy at SAP Concur, wrote in his article:
“In the future, Concur Travel plans to obtain NDC content via the GDSs when SAP Concur believes that a robust, scalable, and commercially transparent solution is available.”
“The flurry of recent NDC announcements from airlines, GDSs, and TMCs represent great progress, but continued work remains in order to provide the stable and scalable solutions our industry and customers need,” he added.
Sultan encourages customers to align with their preferred airlines if they are interested in connecting to airlines directly through NDC as well as meet with their TMCs for further support and know about what additional costs they may incur to support this new channel.
American Airlines’ NDC content connectivity to SAP Concur is still currently in the pilot phase.
