NDC is gradually becoming a way of life for business travellers. Initiated by IATA in the early 2010s, this New Distribution Capability (NDC) enables airlines to offer travel agencies and their corporate customers a "one-stop shop" for all their business travel needs. rich content with a wider range of fares or the sale of additional products such as upgrades, baggage supplements, meals or WiFi. In other words, a far greater variety than the Edifact technology on which GDSs have relied for decades, and with it new horizons for managing air travel budgets.
According to Navan, this standard is gradually taking off, representing 31% of all flights booked in Europe on its travel platform, compared with 20% last year. While not all the world's airlines have yet switched over to the NDC era, European carriers are far from lagging behind in this evolution of distribution. " In this region, many airlines are major players. pioneers in NDC and now provide differentiated contentsaid Michael Riegel, Navan's CEO for the EMEA region. the NDC standard not only can work, but is already working for business travellers" .
While Navan has NDC connections with 12 airlines in Europe - including the Lufthansa group, Air France-KLM and British Airways - it is in Germany has the highest adoption rate, accounting for almost half (45 %) of flights booked through Navan in May, compared to 37 % a year earlier. France and the Netherlands are just behind in terms of usage with almost a third (31 %) of bookings made with Navan, compared to 7 % in France and 10 % in the Netherlands in May 2023, while in the UK, 29 % of bookings were for NDC content.
" When the NDC standard is deployed, it is increasingly preferred to traditional methods." says Michael Riegel. This adoption is also due to the fact that, according to Navan, up to 57 % of the fares published by the main European airlines could be absent from traditional distribution channelsdepending on the itinerary. At the same time, this solution does not seem to work against controlling business travel costs since, according to British Airways, NDC represents an opportunity for potential savings of up to 12%, due to a combination of avoided GDS surcharges and price differentials with traditional GDS offers, with fares up to 60% cheaper.
