Amadeus and Flight Centre announce strategic partnership to drive progress with NDC

Flight Centre Travel Group will provide input into the design for Amadeus’ NDC-enabled solution for travel sellers, a major milestone for Amadeus’ recently announced NDC-X programme. 

Amadeus and Flight Centre Travel Group today announce that Amadeus will be providing distribution technology for Flight Centre’s business across EMEA and Asia. As one of Flight Centre’s partners of choice, Amadeus will be working hand-in-hand with Flight Centre to transform its IT and operations through innovative solutions and support expansion in these regions.

With the adoption of Amadeus Selling Platform Connect, and a range of integrated mobile, and business intelligence capabilities, the group’s travel agents in 17 countries will be able to deliver high quality and personalized services to travelers in these markets.

Flight Centre will also be a driver customer in the creation of Amadeus’ new NDC-enabled solution for business and retail travel agencies.

The two companies will work together, with Flight Centre providing input into Amadeus’ design and build of an NDC-enabled solution. This will enable travel sellers worldwide to shop, order and pay for flights and related services, in addition to changing and cancelling bookings, using the NDC standard in Amadeus Selling Platform Connect. This means travel sellers like Flight Centre will be able to give their customers an even richer choice of fares and the option to book NDC-powered ancillary services within an already familiar working environment.

Amadeus has already started to collaborate with several airlines to define a solution that gives travel agents access to travel content using the NDC standard. The objective is to make NDC content easy to access and compare so travel providers and sellers can serve travellers simply, quickly and accurately.

Graham Turner, Managing Director of Flight Centre Travel Group said, “Our approach has always been to evolve with industry developments and the needs of our customers in order to aggregate and offer the widest, most relevant content possible. We are committed to ensuring Flight Centre stays ahead of the curve in terms of GDS technology and systems, particularly as new initiatives like NDC emerge. That’s why we are excited to have partnered with Amadeus in our Asia and EMEA businesses. We wanted a leading technology partner, not just a GDS supplier, who could work with us to drive our business forward with tech innovation for the benefit of our customers.”

Rajiv Rajian, EVP of Business Travel at Amadeus, said, “We are proud to be delivering Flight Centre’s distribution and IT needs and we’re excited to have Flight Centre as a driver customer on our NDC journey. As we progress on our NDC-X program, we’re also evolving our entire travel platform to bring together all relevant content from any source (GDS, NDC, airline proprietary APIs, and aggregators) to be distributed via any channel or device. The first evolution of our platform is underway and will give travel sellers, like Flight Centre, access to more content, and will give airlines the flexibility to distribute their products and offers however they choose.”

Amadeus is committed to achieving the NDC level 3 certification as an aggregator this year, followed by delivering a first fully scalable solution to travel sellers worldwide in 2019. This will then continue to develop and evolve, adding more sophisticated use cases along the way.

Flight Centre’s travel agents will adopt a range of Amadeus solutions in the following markets: EMEA (United Kingdom, Ireland, Netherlands, Germany, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, South Africa, Namibia, and UAE) and Asia (Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia, and India). In Australia and New Zealand, Amadeus will also provide technology solutions for some of Flight Centre’s online travel agency businesses. Amadeus is also a key IT partner to help Flight Centre grow its business in new markets and segments.