THE NEW DISTRIBUTION CAPABILITY (NDC) 625 passengers as options to choose from when booking an air trip. While these options can be easily presented to passengers in the airlines’ websites, providing them with a modern consumer experience, the CRS systems are very limited in the options they can offer: they are mostly limited to schedules, fares and availability. In a world of fierce competition among them, airlines constantly propose new products and services that the passenger cannot compare when booking through a CRS: features such as the size of the seat, the inflight entertainment options or menus on board cannot be seen by the customer since the system prevents him/her from assessing what the ticket comprises. The airlines are therefore missing the opportunity to obtain more value from the innovations they introduce, while the passenger is deprived of a better understanding of the choices he can make. As an example, the Premium Economy Class, a popular new product between the classic economy and business classes that was introduced by some airlines a few years ago, took a long time to be offered through the CRS systems, as they did not adapt promptly. As a result, the considerable economic cost of refurbishing plane cabins took much longer to be recovered by the sales of this new class, which was only available through airlines’ websites. In addition to this technology bottleneck, airlines suffer from another commercial restriction. While the transition to NDC has got significant traction, airlines still sell 40% of their tickets through legacy CRS companies (which represent roughly 60% of their revenue). However, in sharp contrast with the very significant competition among the airlines, these volumes are distributed globally through three major CRS companies, each holding a significant predominance in at least one region of the world. This makes each one of them essential for any airline, as none of them could afford losing their customers in a specific region. Finally, the CRS have a strong IT focus, providing core platforms both for the airlines and for travel agencies. 3. BACKGROUND FOR NDC 3.1. Consumers are changing and have new expectations Consumers have increasingly demanding expectations, and this also concerns the way they shop, book and pay. They want to be inspired by a rich retailing
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