Sabre Advances NDC Capabilities

Sabre Corporation has unveiled three further milestones in its progress towards delivering NDC-enabled solutions. These include:

• NDC content can now be booked through GetThere, Sabre’s corporate online booking tool
• Sabre received NDC Level 4 certification as an IT provider
• NDC offers from Singapore Airlines are now more widely available through Sabre’s global distribution system (GDS) to qualified agency customers

After last year’s certification as an aggregator, Sabre is now also certified as NDC Level 4 Capable by the International Air Transport Association (IATA). The certification confirms Sabre’s technical ability to support a set of criteria related to full offer and order management capabilities.

Currently, Sabre is piloting NDC capabilities within GetThere, the online booking solution trusted by corporations in more than 100 countries. Business travellers can select policy-compliant NDC offers in addition to traditional content. The support of NDC offers encourages adherence to corporate travel policies by delivering rich, personalized content and providing added flexibility to travelers.

Travel Management Companies using GetThere will have the ability to fulfill, ticket and service NDC bookings through Sabre Red 360.

Saunvit Pandya, senior director, product management, Sabre Travel Solutions in charge of customer touchpoints, explained: “We want to provide an end-to-end NDC solution that is convenient, easy to use and helps ensure seamless connectivity across our portfolio of customer touchpoints, including GetThere and Sabre Red 360, our point-of-sale tool for travel agents.”

Pandya continued: “We are convinced that integration of NDC offers will build upon the significant value we already provide to all stakeholders in business travel. Our business travel technology product suite enables TMCs to focus on what’s most important – understanding their customers’ needs, customizing their offers and ultimately creating lasting relationships.”

In the second quarter of 2020, Sabre launched NDC offers from Singapore Airlines, a member of IATA’s NDC Leaderboard and a Sabre Beyond NDC partner, to qualified travel agencies based in Singapore through the carrier’s KrisConnect program.

Since then, access continues to expand and now includes more than 25 locations. Locations added this week include Bangladesh, South Africa, Sri Lanka and United Arab Emirates. In addition to broader access to NDC content, eligible agencies using the Sabre Offer and Order APIs, or Sabre Red 360, can now not only shop and book NDC offers, but also void, refund and exchange NDC orders.

Through its collaborative “Beyond NDC” initiative, Sabre is focused on modernizing distribution technology to support more consistent access to personalized offers and rich content across channels. Additionally, Sabre is working to help ensure that its solutions support end-to-end agency workflows at scale.

Kathy Morgan, vice president, Offer Sourcing, Sabre Travel Solutions, pointed out that: “NDC is an important enabler of Sabre’s vision for personalized travel. Over the past year, the travel landscape has changed dramatically, but our focus has not.”

And Morgan added: “Our continued progress going beyond NDC, combined with our recent announcements about Sabre Travel AI and the Sabre Smart Retail Engine, demonstrate how we are creating a set of solutions to power personalized travel experiences at scale.”