American Airlines has signed new multi-year agreements with the three major global distribution systems (GDSs) - Amadeus, Sabre and Travelport.
The deals will allow the US carrier to provide expanded New Distribution Capability (NDC) products to customers from 2023.
American already provides NDC-enabled content through Amadeus and Travelport and will begin to do so through Sabre in early 2023.
Corporates will be able to access American's NDC content through their booking tools and travel management companies through those GDSs, as well as the airline’s direct channels.
“The agencies that are connected to those GDSs that connect to that content will have access to it,” said Neil Geurin, American’s managing director of airline retailing.
These new deals will create “lots of NDC content that isn’t available today,” said Geurin, adding that his team has been working on this “for a long time, almost a decade”.
“We haven’t really had that flexibility the last few years. This is the first step down that path,” Geurin said. “Connecting our agency partners with NDC will be the critical next step so we can get new content to them, and certainly existing content as well.”
Options “coming soon” will include new types of fares, bundles of products and services, different ancillary products and “better ways to service tickets.”
As for specific differences, Geurin cited seat maps in the booking process. He also noted the potential for avoiding selling services to corporate customers that have already been earned via the client’s status.
“We are excited about that because it’s an easy way for the corporate customer to save money and have a more rewarding, fulfilling experience with us,” added Geurin.
American will also be able to set sellable content levels with each agency and also can restrict unique content to its own channels.
“We are still working through what that might look like down the road,” Geurin said. “That may open up new opportunities for corporate customers. We’ll look at things like that in 2023 and 2024 and see where we head from there.”