ARC has published best-practice guidelines for the servicing and support of airline tickets booked with New Distribution Capability (NDC) technology.
The document puts forward 20 best practices in categories such as executing exchanges, debit memos and waivers. It was developed mostly over the course of this year by ARC's NDC Advancement Working Group. The group, which first met in person in February, was comprised of representatives from seven airlines, six travel technology providers (including GDSs), six OTAs and ticket consolidators, and 17 travel agencies. Its charge was to address issues negatively addressing NDC adoption, including servicing snafus that have drawn the ire of travel advisors.
Though airlines began completing their first NDC-enabled transactions in 2016, adoption of the digital merchandising technology has gone much slower than IATA and many airlines would have liked. In October, 19.1% of air transactions settled by ARC were NDC-enabled, with OTAs accounting for the vast majority. A total of 822 travel agencies reported NDC transactions during the month.
ARC hopes that its best-practice guidelines will normalize NDC processes and speed adoption. A fundamental discrepancy between NDC and legacy bookings is that with NDC, the airline controls the offer and services the order rather than the GDS. As a result, servicing protocols and capabilities are inconsistent from airline to airline.
Airline-owned ARC has previously facilitated working groups that developed best practices for managing debit memos and for irregular operations schedule changes.
Best practices put forward by ARC in the newly published NDC document include six related to executing exchanges; two each related to debit memos, waivers and timelines; one each related to efficiency, modifiers/qualifiers, order change notifications and unused value; and four that ARC labeled as general items.
For example, one best practice in executing exchanges is that when an exchange is rejected by an airline, the NDC interface should explain why and allow the agent to submit an acceptable alternative request.
One best practice in the general items category calls for travel technology providers to allow for the comparison of NDC fares and traditional GDS fares when both are offered by an airline.
When applicable, each best practice contains guidance separately for airlines, travel agencies and travel technology providers.