Flight Centre and Amadeus have announced a distribution agreement.
The travel agency group will use Amadeus' distribution technology to power its EMEA and Asia businesses and will help drive Amadeus' new NDC-enabled solution for business and retail travel agencies.
In order to transform Flight Centre's IT and operations, Amadeus will work hand and hand with the company to create innovative solutions and support expansion in these regions.
"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," said Graham Turner, managing director of Flight Centre Travel Group.
"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," added Graham. "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."
The move will be a step forward for Flight Centre and give its agents an even richer choice of fares and options in a familiar working environment. The new technology will streamline the abilities of travel sellers to shop for and book flights and related services for clients. They will also be able to change and cancel reservations using the NDC standard in Amadeus Selling Platform Connect.
The new partnership will give Flight Centre travel sellers the ability to take advantage of the work Amadeus has already achieved with NDC technology through its partnerships with several airlines. The objective is to make NDC content easy to access and compare so travel providers and sellers can serve travelers simply, quickly and accurately.
"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," said Rajiv Rajian, executive vice president of business travel at Amadeus.
"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, proprietary APIs, and aggregators) to be distributed via any channel or device," Rajian added. "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 aiming to achieve the NDC level 3 certification as an aggregator this year and would like to deliver the first fully scalable solution to travel sellers worldwide in 2019.
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