Garner issues NDC warning to travel buyers

“It’s time to adjust. Don’t fall asleep.” That was the message to corporate travel buyers during Corey Garner’s keynote address on airline distribution change at The Beat Live in New York City last week.

Garner, a former American Airlines executive who founded Garner advisory in 2020, warned corporates not to mistake the carrier’s recent NDC backflip as a sign that the trend will slow down. Instead, he said, “It’s going to multiply. It will take years – it always takes years – but it always goes in a predictable direction. We’re not done here.”

He added that the best way to predict what’s next in airline distribution is to understand carriers’ economic interests. For some US carriers, revenue from co-branded credit cards is growing faster than passenger revenue, he said, so airlines will look to deepen the loyalty relationship with customers through direct interactions – and Garner believes this is increasingly true for corporate travellers.

“It’s absolutely impossible to break the relationship between a legacy TMC and a GDS. Forget it. I tried everything, it’s never going to happen,” he explained.

“The only way [for an airline] to make any progress in corporate travel is to take [its] case to the individual traveller and the only way to cause the individual traveller to do something different with their booking activity is to hit them with something that affects them personally – and it’s not fare content differentiation, it’s not continuous pricing, it’s not surcharges… because they’re spending someone else’s money.

“But, if you take their miles away, if you take their status away, then you have a problem. AA did it [and] it’s going to happen again.”

This will raise important questions for buyers who he predicts will fall into one of three camps. Firstly, there are those who will “lean in” and adapt travel policies to support airlines’ push for deeper loyalty with travellers while ensuring those same travellers stay ‘loyal’ to the managed programme – “it doesn’t have to be mutually exclusive,” Garner said.

Secondly, there will be buyers who fight against it and fire travellers who don’t adhere to company policy, and lastly there will be those who fight it and get fired because senior management ultimately sides with the traveller and not the travel manager.

Those buyers who lean in will need to ensure traveller profiles and travel policies are “portable” across multiple channels as well as ensure all post-booking processes can be supported. “And that’s going to be hard,” Garner said.

As buyers make these decisions it will create knock-on effects in the supply chain. “Some in the chain will fight it tooth and nail – it happens every time – and that might even be most of them. Some will drag their feet. Some will lean in… Whatever you do, I recommend that you consult with multiple people and consider the source in whatever advice you’re getting… Everyone you talk to has a vested interest.”

He added that early adaptors of NDC – those buyers who are currently experimenting with new entrants and legacy players – have the “disproportional responsibility” to create a path for others to follow.

“Don’t wait until the only person you can ask is somebody who’s invested in keeping the status quo. Don’t wait. Do your homework. Now having time on your hands is an advantage,” he said.

Speaking as part of an NDC-focused panel at the event, United Airlines vice president of sales strategy and effectiveness, Glenn Hollister, said the industry “needs to get better at standardising the business processes” behind NDC. However, he insisted that the service promises of NDC “are real” and that there’s been “a lot of OBT progress in the last six months”.

Flight Centre Travel Group global manager of travel distribution Nicola Ping, also on the panel, highlighted the importance of choosing the right technology partner. Ping warned that “there’s a lot of hot air” when it comes to technology solutions and cautioned buyers to ensure tech partners are “scalable”.