Ongoing Middle East airspace disruptions are stress-testing the industry’s shift to NDC, with agents claiming that servicing limitations are leaving South African passengers in limbo.
Agents who opted for NDC bookings are now being forced into a manual bottleneck, where they must rely on airline call centres to reissue or rebook their clients’ flights.
Unlike traditional GDS bookings, where agents can calculate and action changes directly, many NDC bookings require third-party intervention – creating delays at a time when speed is critical.
“What takes an agent 20 minutes on a GDS to calculate and change, now takes days waiting on third parties with NDC,” Glenda Ingram, Owner of West Beach Travel, told Travel News.
“We are disempowered as agents offering a professional service because NDC does not have capability to make the changes as we would in the GDS. GDS was created for agents to offer a professional service and, at times like this, we cannot offer that professional service on NDC bookings that are not designed to make these manual changes.”
NDC strains client relations
Agents are reporting that, due to the vast number of queries airlines’ call centres and representatives are receiving and handling, they are struggling to reissue or rebook their clients’ tickets timeously, impacting their relationship.
“When a client experiences that their agent cannot help them quickly on their flight booking, then it removes their trust in whether they should have just booked the flights themselves. This is counter-productive for the travel industry,” said David van der Heever-Liebenberg, Travel Director and Co-Founder of Mr and Mr Jones Boutique Travel Management.
Van der Heever-Liebenberg is one of many agents who reported that his recent experience had drastically impacted his willingness to book via NDC, despite airline incentives and the occasionally better pricing.
“This certainly will impact how I would consider using NDC going forward,” he said, adding that he currently limited his NDC bookings to fares with savings in the tens of thousands or to fares that were exclusively distributed via NDC.
“After this, there is no justifying the front-end savings if it impacts the serviceability of the booking, without any doubt.”
NDC improvements a reprieve to airlines
Agents are arguing that improving NDC’s servicing capabilities would not only benefit travel agents and their clients, it would also relieve the pressure placed on airlines, especially during a crisis.
An agent on OpenJaw noted: “By booking via NDC, we are putting more pressure on the airlines by having them sort out all the bookings, whereas if we were all changing or at least monitoring our own bookings in our GDS, we could have halved the airlines’ workload. I hope big lessons are learned. NDC has failed everyone, from the passenger to the travel agent and the airlines.”
