United Airlines has partnered with Travelport to accelerate its deployment of new NDC functionalities for travel agents.
"This long-term relationship with United Airlines marks a major milestone in accelerating airline retailing for agencies and corporations," said Greg Webb, CEO of Travelport.
"By combining United's advanced NDC capabilities with Travelport's next-generation platform, we're delivering richer content, better service solutions, and more choice for all our customers worldwide."
Through this deal, Travelport will gain early access to United's NDC technology roadmap and NDC-enabled extras, while teams from the companies will work together to co-develop new features and bring them to market rapidly.
Some of the collaborative developments of the partnership include the following:
- Technical cooperation: United and Travelport will work together to create new NDC capabilities specifically for Travelport+.
- Accelerated innovation: The new features and NDC functionalities will be deployed to agents visa the Travelport+ platform.
- Online booking tool extras: United will bring its portfolio of online booking tool (OBT) extras to Travelport's Deem OBT platform. Over time, this inclusion will introduce new capabilities, such as the ability to pool unused United travel credits, directly enrol in the United MileagePlus loyalty programme and use United Jetstream amenity funds as payment for ancillary purchases. OBT extras will also be available in Travelport+ to bring the functionality to travel agents.
The collaboration will be implemented in phases, with initial capabilities launching in early 2026 and additional features rolling out throughout the year.
United will deploy specialised support teams to assist travel agencies during the transition to enhanced NDC capabilities to ensure smoother adoption of new technologies and maximise the value agencies receive.
