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Verteil Technologies, the Kochi-based travel start-up, has facilitated an IATA accredited travel agency to carry out the first “live direct connect booking” through IATA’s NDC specification on the British Airways flight via Verteil Direct Connect, a newly developed platform.
Verteil enabled Magellan Travel to issue a ticket on British Airways by connecting directly with the airline using an NDC (new distribution capability) transaction on the Chennai-London route. With this, the Chennai-based firm has become the first travel agency in India to take advantage of offers coming directly from British Airways.
At present travellers are limited to seat/ fare options when booking a flight using a travel agency or OTA. With direct connect, travellers can finally get access to personalised offers, real-time fares, a full suite of ancillary products and services such as priority check-in and a variety of meal options from the airline directly in the indirect sales channels, says Jerrin Jos, Founder & CEO, Verteil Technologies.
The company is delighted to pioneer the direct connect distribution model in the Indian market, providing travel agents with unique and differentiated offers. With the successful go-live in British Airway’s NDC channel, Verteil is all set to be standard for driving adoption of direct connect NDC-based solutions in the Indian market, he said.
Several international airlines such as British Airways, Lufthansa and Air France have already launched additional fees for any bookings made through legacy indirect distribution channels. These fees are completely waived for tickets booked via an NDC direct connect channel. Full-service carriers are a big proponent of the NDC standards and IATA expects that around 120 airlines will be NDC certified by 2020, he said.
IAAI, one of the major IATA travel agency consortiums in India, had recently signed a contract with Verteil to leverage its direct connect platform for their member agencies to connect directly with airlines. The company is currently in the process of on-boarding these agents to migrate a significant volume of indirect airlines sales in India to its direct connect platform, he said.
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