Accelerating modern retailing: Reaping the benefits of NDC adoption - hand in hand with Amadeus

July 10, 2023

4 Min read

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Guest blog - Tom Roefs

Chief executive, Munckhof Group

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NDC has the potential to reshape the travel industry worldwide, and at Munckhof we believe NDC allows us to accelerate our ambitions.

The benefits of New Distribution Capability (NDC) are now starting to crystallize across our industry. At Munckhof, one of the leading business travel management companies in the Netherlands, we are now offering NDC-sourced content to our business travel customers in a fully integrated way - which means benefits for our customers and benefits for us. It has been a long and winding road, and we still have steps to go – but we clearly see that NDC allows us to accelerate our ambitions. Our brand is focused on excellent service, extensive content, and the best price, wherever and whenever. Customers trust that we will constantly innovate and develop our proposition, and for us NDC was an obvious gamechanger. That’s why we made the conscious decision to embrace it fully.

Did we think it would be smooth sailing? Far from it. Do we still think it is the right approach? Unquestionably. Do we think we have found the right technology partner to bring us success? Without a doubt. Let me explain.

Take the long road and walk it

While the possibilities and potential of NDC were already apparent early on, it was equally evident it would take a significant investment of time and money to deliver seamless access to valuable NDC-sourced content to our customers.

This is where Amadeus comes in. It is one of the few companies in the world capable of creating and integrating the technology we need to remain successful and relevant to our customers. Based on its robust approach to NDC, its expertise, technology and vision, we signed up for the Amadeus NDC [X] program back in 2019. And we have never looked back. Amadeus has supported us by making sure the NDC content can be booked and serviced through intuitive flows next to all the other content already available in the Amadeus system. This gives us a best-in-class solution for all the NDC and non-NDC content for both our corporate customers and our travel consultants.

In our experience, the impact of NDC on a travel seller’s organization is not to be underestimated. This is not a ‘plug and play’ operation. Integrating NDC has had an operational, commercial and cultural impact on our organization and all our processes – and will continue to do so as it develops. But Amadeus has proved to be a partner we can trust as we adapt and embrace this new technology, to secure the operational efficiency and continued productivity of our staff.

Payoff

Travelers are consumers and today’s consumers want tailored, relevant offers. Today, the NDC technology makes this possible in the travel sector - the benefits are now beginning to be felt and will only increase over time. The deployment of the new technical protocol has been a decade-long process – and it is still far from complete, but at Munckhof, we try to think of the possibilities, rather than impossibilities. I would encourage our partners in the industry to seriously think twice about postponing the implementation of NDC and to move away from being defensive to a more inquisitive position on the technology. NDC is here to stay. The new technology will help you to improve your value proposition, build a stronger business case and help you to differentiate yourself from competitors who are not embracing NDC.

NDC has the potential to reshape the travel industry worldwide. We all need more and richer content to enable personalized travel experiences, optimize ancillary services and continuous pricing capabilities, as well as many other new attributes travelers now expect from the travel buying experience.

In a world where sustainability and environmental impact becomes the most important decision driver, NDC-sourced content will help travelers to make the right choices.

NDC is no longer an optional extra – it is here to stay, and all of us at Munckhof are committed to advancing on the NDC journey. No matter how long and winding the road has been, the destination has always been clearly in view: delivering relevance, choice and value to our customers.

Read the first blog in our “Accelerating modern retailing” serieshere .

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