WASHINGTON -- ARC has enhanced its settlement platform to support IATA's New
Distribution Capability (NDC).
The upgraded capability will go into testing with two airlines
early next year, ARC vice president of product Doug Mangold said during an
interview on the sidelines of ARC's annual TravelConnect meeting in Washington.
Under ARC's longstanding technology, it could only
automatically settle transactions that agencies and airlines conducted through the
GDS. If a sale was made through a direct connect, the parties would have to set
up a special settlement system with ARC.
With the enhanced platform, ARC will automatically be able to
settle NDC-facilitated direct-connect transactions provided the airline is a
member.
"We can handle the different flavors of NDC that the
airlines are implementing," Mangold said.
ARC's move to widen its settlement capabilities comes as
adoption of NDC remains in its early stages but appears to be gathering
momentum.
Last year week, the Airline Tariff Publishing Company and
the travel industry technology company SITA announced the launch of NDC
Exchange, a marketplace that the companies say will enable airlines and travel
sellers to more quickly and less expensively adopt NDC. Should the marketplace
attract enough airlines, it could serve as a facilitator for agencies searching
for ancillary product offerings such as bag fees and bundled fares. Those are
products that NDC capability supports but that are largely unavailable at
present in GDSs.
Meanwhile, in July American announced that it would pay $2
per segment to agencies for bookings through an NDC-enabled connection.
According to IATA, 36 airlines were using some form of NDC
as of early June, and another 80 were expected to come onboard in the near
term.
Mangold said ARC wants to be ready to facilitate the
evolving travel industry.
"For us to be able support the traditional GDS method
and the agency direct method without having to rebuild all of their reconciliation
and customer service data input processes will really serve the industry in the
long run."