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I am a travel agent, looking to know about NDC.

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As has already pointed to the formal definition, this note focuses on what matters day-to-day for a travel agent like : practical benefits, common pitfalls, and a short rollout checklist.

  • Decide your goal first: more ancillaries and merchandising, exclusive fares, better UX, or cost reduction. Different goals call for different technical choices (direct airline APIs, GDS NDC channels, or aggregators).
  • Ask each airline what exactly is available on NDC: which routes, which fare families, how ancillaries are presented, who issues the ticket, and how post‑sale servicing (changes/refunds/irregular ops) works.
  • Get sandbox/test credentials early. Verify the full booking lifecycle: shopping → offer → order creation → ticketing → post‑sale changes. Test taxes, fare rules, and payment flows end-to-end.
  • Plan systems work: map offers to your back office, update fare/comms reconciliation, and add UI flows for ancillaries. Train agents on the new booking and servicing steps.
  • Start small: pilot one airline or route, measure conversion, ancillaries per pax, servicing calls, and error rates. Use results to expand or change strategy.

Cautions: implementations vary a lot between airlines, content parity with legacy channels is not guaranteed, interline and corporate agreements can be trickier, and integration costs can be significant. Vendors often advertise “all content” — validate that claim in writing.

Bottom line: treat NDC as a new distribution channel to run in parallel, not a drop‑in replacement. Test, measure, and phase rollout so service and accounting stay reliable while capturing any new merchandising revenue.

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Member Avatar for rproffitt

Have to answer no since if NDC was that good, the sellers would have made the sale of the product. I don't sell such here so make those that sell NDC work for the sale as well as answer your questions.

Member Avatar for Dani

What is NDC?

Member Avatar for rproffitt

NDC (New Distribution Capability) is a travel industry-supported program (NDC Program) launched by IATA for the development and market adoption of a new, XML-based data transmission standard (NDC Standard).

  • iata.org

There's more at iata.org's website for developers.

commented: so it's probably useless as is for travel agents, but potentially useful for those making software for travel agents. +16
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