Travelport and Singapore Airlines Deepen NDC Collaboration

Travelport, a leading technology company serving the travel industry, recently deepened its collaboration with Singapore Airlines (SIA) on its New Distribution Capability (NDC) standard program, known as KrisConnect.

The KrisConnect Programme is SIA’s initiative to leverage IATA’s NDC standard.

At the recent launch of the airline’s expanded KrisConnect Programme in Singapore, Damian Hickey, Global Vice President & Global Head of Air Travel Partners, briefed representatives of around 200 agencies on Travelport’s NDC implementation roadmap for SIA.

Agencies connecting to KrisConnect through Travelport will gain access to customised offerings that are tailored to customers’ needs and preferences. SIA has advised that they will also benefit from a wider range of fares and other content come April 2020.

According to Travelport, all of this will be delivered through an intuitive, user-friendly interface integrated into the Travelport systems that agencies are already familiar with.

Since KrisConnect was first launched in late 2018, Travelport has been working extensively with SIA to integrate its NDC content, ahead of general availability from April 2020. Functionality is expected to be launched through Travelport’s NDC-enabled points-of-sale, starting with initial pilots with a small group of agency customers in the coming months.

Hickey also gave a preview of the intuitive new NDC-enabled process which agencies can soon expect, as Travelport prepares to launch the next phase of its NDC delivery shortly.

“Close collaboration with the agency community is crucial to the smooth delivering of a complex process like NDC; and we will continue to partner SIA and the wider travel industry to deliver travellers an elevated, personalised booking experience,” Hickey said.

According to Travelport, this latest collaboration builds on its leading momentum in rolling out NDC capabilities for the industry. Travelport was the first GDS to make a live NDC booking in October 2018, and is already connected to six airlines’ NDC content.