Travel management company Egencia launched Lufthansa Group's
New Distribution Capability content in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France,
Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK. Egencia clients
in these countries can access NDC rates from Lufthansa Group via an integration
with aggregator TravelFusion.
Travelers now can book all fares, including Economy Light Fares,
not available in global distribution systems, from Lufthansa German Airlines,
Austrian Airlines and SWISS Airlines through Egencia without incurring
Lufthansa's 16-euro distribution cost charge. Egencia has trained over 1,000 agents
to use Lufthansa's agent tool to service and support these bookings. Egencia
will charge clients an 'air booking-nonstandard' for each booking. Egencia
would not disclose the fee amount but confirmed it would be less than the
Lufthansa DCC and "in line with the market," according to director
global transportation supply Mohit Chandiramani.
Egencia will capture the same data on NDC bookings as they have on
non-NDC bookings for reporting purposes. The bookings are fully integrated into
Egencia Analytics Studio, which provides visibility into policy compliance
metrics, including advance purchase and cabin class, along with air regular
reporting data such as origin, destination and price. In addition, bookings are
displayed on the Egencia Travel Tracker, giving travel managers visibility for
duty of care.
The TMC is leveraging TravelFusion to access Lufthansa NDC rates
for now, but that's not the long-term plan, according to a spokesperson. Expedia
Group, the parent company of Egencia, is currently testing a direct connect
with Lufthansa to ensure it delivers on scalability and customer experience. When
ready, Egencia will integrate it into its platform. The spokesperson was unable
to give a timeline on that development.
The company did disclose, however, that it is close to launching
an NDC content for British Airways later this month. It was not immediately
clear if Egencia would deliver that content via an aggregator or a direct
connect. Regardless, both BA and Lufthansa integrations will display NDC and
non-NDC content side by side and allow customers to mix both types of fares within
a single booking.
“Our strategy is to leverage Expedia Group’s technology first,
which sources NDC content directly from the airline," said Egencia product
management VP Arvind Prakash, but added that the company would continue to
explore all avenues for NDC content, whether direct connect, via global
distribution systems or aggregators.
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