Warning of huge costs directly on travel agencies and their customers, the World Travel Agents Associations Alliance (WTAAA) reports it is closely monitoring the International Air Transport Association’s (IATA) New Distribution Capability (NDC) and continues to "encourage IATA to maintain an open dialogue on NDC and to ensure that travel agents' views are taken seriously."
IATA's NDC has also been questioned by the American Society of Travel Agents (ASTA), the Business Travel Coalition (BTC) and the Global Business Travel Association (GBTA) - all groups with substantial international membership.
WTAAA offered three objections to IATA's NDC: "First, NDC appears to eliminate or reduce consumers’ ability to carry out neutral comparison shopping, which currently promotes competition of airfares between carriers. Second, NDC appears to require the disclosure of consumers’ personal data as a precondition for obtaining a fare quote, which raises a host of data privacy concerns. And third, NDC appears to impose huge costs directly on to travel agencies, and indirectly to their customers, as travel agency systems and processes would need to be redesigned to accommodate NDC.”
WTAAA said that many WTAAA members are also on IATA’s recently formed Agents-Airlines Forum (AAF), which meets regularly to review distribution issues, including NDC. During its bi-annual board meeting in São Paulo, Brazil WTAAA's agenda included discussions on IATA's NDC.
“We are pleased that IATA has opened the NDC dialogue with WTAAA, which is preeminent global travel agency association whose travel agency members are responsible for over 80 percent of all global travel agency sales,” said WTAAA. “As part of this dialogue, WTAAA has shared a list of concerns with IATA, which include, but are not limited to, three major issues."
“We have made it clear to IATA that we are not opposed to a more efficient way of doing business, however we need to ensure that the end justifies the means for everyone (consumers and travel agents), and not just the airlines.”
WTAAA members include the American Society of Travel Agents (ASTA), Association of Canadian Travel Agencies (ACTA), Australian Federation of Travel Agents (AFTA), Association of Brazilian Travel Agents (ABAV), European Travel Agents' and Tour Operators' Associations (ECTAA), Association of South African Travel Agents (ASATA), Travel Agency Federation of India (TAFI) and Travel Agents' Association of New Zealand (TAANZ).
Visit www.wtaaa.org