"NDC does not challenge the relevance of the TMC."
That is the view of "15 of the world's largest national, multinational and most influential TMCs" which make up GTEC, the Global Travel Management Executive Council, which was formed in March 2018 to ensure closer ties between the TMC community and IATA, the airline body driving the new distribution standard.
The claim comes in an open letter from GTEC — which includes American Express GBT, ATPI/Direct Travel, Carlson Wagonlit, Clarity, Click Travel and Egencia among its members — which serves as a response to a similar letter sent by TMAG in September.
The Council maintains that the majority of work on NDC "is still ahead". It says, "A number of TMCs are already very active in putting in place new technology solutions, or discussing the way forward with their IT partners; however, much is still happening behind closed doors."
This is clearly true. Lufthansa, one of the airlines at the forefront of NDC developments, last week announced that only around 1 percent of its bookings were passing through NDC channels at present, even given the boost received by the airline's NDC Partner programme with TMCs. UK country manager Andreas Koester said that the airline was currently working with 70 agencies, of which 90 percent are TMCs.
This week, BCD Travel announced it was one of those TMCs. However, it made clear that it was still early days.
"The program will allow BCD to determine whether key components of the NDC process are cost-effective for customers while meeting requirements for servicing, reporting and duty-of-care," said the TMC.
Many in the industry are now looking at a new IATA certification called NDC@Scale which is intended to move from these early stages to more mainstream adoption and to help leading airlines to "achieve their goal of 20% of NDC transactions powered by an NDC API by the end of 2020". NDC@Scale will be launched in March 2019.
So are TMCs on board?
GTEC's open letter seems to say so.
It says, "GTEC members are now involved in finalising the details to ensure NDC@Scale meets agency process and servicing needs. This is critical to ensure the TMC can fulfil customer requirements of comparability, policy control, cost management, reporting and duty of care."
However the TMCs sounded some notes of caution, including who would pay for NDC adoption.
"It would be remiss of us not to mention commercials as a potential barrier. There is recognition across GTEC that the business model is changing but we can say a changing business model is not something we are afraid of and is no excuse for lack of progression," it said.
Yet not everyone in the business travel value chain is ready, says GTEC.
"The analogy we would use is it feels as though we are being encouraged to move into a half-built house! It is our job, with our technology providers, to deliver a fully built house. A house that is better than the one we had before. After all, why would anyone go through the pain and expense of a house renovation if there was no improvement made? Like any house build, there are multiple skills and resources required that jointly need to follow a critical path, the same applies to enabling NDC."
Some in the industry compare NDC to e-ticketing. The first e-ticket was produced in 1994 with global standards emerging from IATA in 1997. The industry only moved to 100% e-ticketing in 2008.
NDC was first announced in 2012. We may be looking at the mid-Twenties before NDC becomes de facto.