Access to Lufthansa Group Airlines’ NDC Smart Offer and British Airways Full NDC Content Generally Available on Concur Travel
At SAP Concur, we’ve always been hyper-focused on ensuring our customers can access all relevant business travel content, regardless of the source of that content. In 2008 we were the first to make the complete inventory of Southwest Airlines available in a corporate booking tool, and we introduced Concur TripLink to give clients the ability to bring supplier-direct bookings back in to their managed travel program. Customer needs continue to drive our innovation today.
Throughout the past few years, New Distribution Capability (NDC) has been one of the hottest topics in the managed travel industry. The promise of more personalized fare bundles, continuous pricing, and the desire of airlines to display their full product attributes have led to a lot of excitement and discussion about the benefits and roadblocks with NDC.
Based on customer interest, we’ve been working diligently with British Airways, Lufthansa Group airlines, Travelfusion, Farelogix and several TMCs on pilots to ensure that we are able to deliver the necessary experience via NDC. Today, we’re making NDC content from Lufthansa Group airlines and British Airways available to all Concur Travel Customers and their TMCs (travel management companies). Any client can turn on this NDC content through their Concur Travel configuration.
When NDC content is enabled for the relevant airline, this feature will allow clients to avoid carrier-imposed GDS distribution cost charges and will ensure that they have access to the most competitive fares and exclusive ancillary services. As some airlines have removed content from the GDS or have added the benefit of continuous fares which the GDSes don’t include, we’ve heard from many travel managers that would like the extra savings these fares afford them. We’re excited to be able to make those available to our customers in the booking tool.
In addition, since British Airways makes all of these lower fares and additional content available on their website, customers who have the Concur TripLink product can already benefit, while still supporting their travel policies, realizing their negotiated discounts, fulfilling their duty of care obligations and having the information automatically integrated into Concur. We’re also excited to share that Lufthansa’s integration with Concur TripLink will be live in Q4 2019, which allow travelers to get access to Lufthansa Group airlines’ NDC Smart Offer either in the Concur Booking Tool or directly on the Lufthansa website, including access to fares from Austrian Airlines, Brussels Airlines, and Swiss International Airlines.
SAP Concur is the only company that provides multiple ways for travel managers to bring non-GDS content into their managed travel programs and reduce their costs along the way.
Concur Travel customers will now have two different options for obtaining the full content of British Airways as well as access to Lufthansa Group airlines’ NDC Smart Offer. They can enable NDC content via the Select Access content feature and see the content directly in the Concur booking tool and/or they can enable TripLink to capture all of the benefits of managed travel, even if their travelers are booking directly on the airlines’ website.
“Both SAP Concur and we are committed to delivering innovative travel solutions. With our combined technology and the direct interface via Concur Travel to all Lufthansa Group airlines and Concur TripLink to lufthansa.com we believe in our joint ability to enhance the end-to-end experience of our product innovations for all partners in the value chain,” said Xavier Lagardère, Head of Distribution Lufthansa Group Hub Airlines.
“Our TripLink connection went live in April 2018, and we are delighted that the NDC connection will now also be available to all Concur Travel customers and their TMCs,” said Ian Luck, Head of Distribution at British Airways. “Our aim is to give our customers choice and offer multiple options to purchase British Airways flights and products in a way that best suits their needs, while also providing access to new fares and products that are enabled by our NDC capability.”
For more information, please check out the press release on the Lufthansa Group newsroom, and for more information on TripLink, please visit www.concur.co.uk/triplink