584 COMPETITION LAW IN TOURISM 8. The Vice President, Advocacy and Member Relations from the Association of Canadian Travel Agencies Association (ACTA), Mrs Heather Craig-Peddie, commented as well: “We’ve spoken to a few of our large TMC members and to date there are no additional «hard» fees attached to NDC (i.e. technology connections, GDS fees etc.). The most challenging issue has been disruption of operations. Comments received included technology «unreadiness» which caused confusion and operational issues. For example, some of the technology booking tools used by the TMCs (Concur) were not able to handle the number of new fare options being offered and therefore there were problems of display visibility etc., and a considerable amount of TMC client complaints/recovery along with fixing operations/technical issues post launch. Our Travel Agencies and technology partners like Concur don’t feel they were given enough notice to adequately prepare their people and systems for the new «branded fares». ACTA is continuing to compile the feedback and will provide a report for the WTAAA meeting in September. We’ll also let you know if there are any urgent updates in the mean time, as we at ACTA feel there may be some new and significant developments over the next few weeks”. 9. The response from the American Society of Travel Agents (ASTA) came from Mr Mark Meader, Senior Vice President, Industry Affairs & Education Association: “ASTA has not been asked to, nor taken a public position on NDC and does not have plans to do so at this time. Standardizing data transmission standards – which is fundamentally what NDC is about – is not in and of itself a bad strategy. It is the business/commercial results stemming from this standardization that come at a high cost operationally to the agency community as airlines inconsistently or slowly adopt NDC, some not adopting it at all, or only certain portions of it. Technology companies, like the GDS, are now more onboard and supportive but have yet to deliver tangible product that provides the agency community the end results needed to judge what will or won’t be the initiative’s ultimate success, nor the cost to the agency community. Without tangible NDC driven solutions in place supporting the agency community, it would be very difficult for us as a collective to «endorse» NDC publicly if asked”.
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