The promise of New Distribution Capability was richer content, but too much of a good thing may be stalling decision-making as look-to-book costs rise and actual bookings lag, according to airlines. But travel managers disagree and suggest the problem may be of the airlines’ own making.
Indeed, none of the travel management companies interviewed experienced booking declines. At CTM, look-to-book ratios increased from roughly 20 percent in January to more than 26 percent by May but experienced operational friction in parts of the booking process. But that may have more to do with the nature of their travelers.
While some suggested rising fares were the culprit even as airlines report they have no trouble recovering fuel costs with 10 percent fare hikes, it is more complicated than that, especially factoring in the very complexity of the search results. In addition, there seems to be several issues at play, including changing traveler and airline behavior.
The issue arose at the recent UATP Airline Distribution Conference in Barcelona, where airlines indicated NDC was responsible for a surge in “look” ratios, suggesting the richer content short circuits actual bookings. The investments made in NDC were not being rewarded with actual bookings, thus costing the airlines not only lost revenue but also increasing technology expense.
More Choice, More Complexity
For some corporate travel managers, this is a matter of being careful what you wish for as airlines designed NDC for leisure not business.
Nicholas Painter-Bosworth, VP North America airline partnerships and strategy at CTM, notes that carrier booking flows showed elevated failure rates between 14 to 16 percent, suggesting some of the additional shopping activity is being driven by repeated searches and abandoned booking attempts rather than simply increased browsing.
“NDC undoubtedly gives travelers access to richer content and more choice, but I don’t think it’s accurate to say people are simply browsing more and booking less,” Painter-Boswoth argues. “Travelers are comparing flexibility, baggage inclusion, seating, loyalty benefits, policy alignment, and overall trip value before a decision. At the same time, not all NDC offers are created equal. Each airline approaches NDC differently. Some return highly targeted origin-and-destination offers, while others return a much broader range of options through multiple hubs and transit points. For corporate travelers, who often prioritize direct flights and efficient itineraries, choice can sometimes add complexity rather than value,” he cautions.
“To be fair, both the GDS and the OTAs warned airlines about this challenge from the outset of NDC,” Nicola Ping, global manager of travel distribution at FCM Travel told Business Travel Executive. “Airline shopping has always been both expensive and high volume. In the old world of EDIFACT, the airlines were somewhat shielded from these costs because much of the shopping aggregation happened within GDS. To minimize cost and improve response times, this was certainly why most OTAs operated on a cache system for shopping,” Ping explains.
“With NDC, however, airlines are responsible for producing the offers themselves so they must be able to handle not only the shopping volume, but also the costs incurred in doing this,” she adds. “While the volumes were initially low and the issue was often ignored, there were conversations about whether the reduction in distribution costs from NDC could ultimately be outweighed by the increase in shopping costs. That said, I don’t believe that NDC has fundamentally changed booking behavior.”
Instead, she points to significant changes in consumer shopping patterns since 2012. “NDC is probably the bigger driver of costs rather than booking behavior. Airlines want to become retailers with NDC – and retailers, by definition, have shelves full of products to look at, not only to tempt customers in, but also to ensure that the product range meets all needs,” Ping continued.
“People doom-scroll shop all day without any immediate intent to buy,” she says, giving a whole new meaning to ‘shop ‘til you drop.’ “NDC was very much designed for the leisure shopper, as it was always intended to be a price-driven flow and close the gap with what could be offered between airline websites and the travel agents. Arguably, corporate customers – while value remains an important factor – also need other considerations in their shopping. And while the IATA standard supports this, airline implementations often don’t. Not only does this exacerbate the shopping issue, but it also drives frustration.”
Different Strokes
Ping says it is more a question of who the customer is rather than the fares. “I think this is very different in a corporate versus leisure scenario,” she says. “Leisure shoppers tend to browse a lot, but corporate travelers do not. They search because they know they must travel. They may look to see the best options, but often they don’t browse at all.”
Travel managers call it teething pains that come with the evolution of NDC and indicate the increase in look-to-book was less about higher fares and more due to greater complexity.
Airlines have changed, too, from being all things to all fliers to prioritizing the premium traveler. Perhaps the original NDC design is now a mismatch, leaving it as one remaining area where airlines are chasing leisure travelers even as they invest in business and first class.
“It’s the ability of the airline to correctly answer the questions a corporate buyer has that would lead to improvement – not necessarily the booking decision itself,” Ping says. “Yet many shopping responses still contain large amounts of content that ultimately gets filtered out by the TMC, which adds unnecessary latency. The cheapest and most efficient approach is for airlines to return results that are aligned with what was asked for in the first place. So, providing them what they need and are permitted to book is a clear win-win scenario.”
Internova Travel Group EVP of partner relations Peter Vlitas agrees that complexity slows workflows. “Offers just clutter the screen, as most will never be sold because they are not optimal,” he says. “It just creates more work and a longer booking flow.”
AI to the Rescue
“NDC enables richer, more dynamic, and more personalized content that aligns with modern digital expectations,” says Delphine Domingues, head of travel distribution product marketing management at Amadeus. “Real-time, offer-based retailing increases interactions, but it also creates opportunities to improve relevance and drive higher-value engagement. We use advanced filtering capabilities, such as Amadeus Advanced Airline Profile (ADAP), developed in close collaboration with airlines and travel sellers to address real operational needs. This reduces unnecessary transactions and improves how search traffic is directed. Today, ADAP filters approximately 175 million unnecessary transactions per day and can reduce ineffective traffic by up to 93 percent for some airlines.”
Painter-Bosworth says better guidance is necessary as well. “Travelers are probably the best reminder of why simplicity still matters,” said Painter-Bosworth. “AI reduces unnecessary shopping activity, repeated searches, and abandoned transactions, which in turn may reduce transaction and servicing costs for airlines and travel management companies.”
However, he explains, the key is transparency. Travelers and travel managers still need confidence in why recommendations are being surfaced. “AI works best when it acts as an intelligence layer that simplifies complexity rather than removing traveler control altogether,” Painter-Bosworth concludes.
Domingues agrees. “AI will play an important role. It has the potential to make offerings more targeted and relevant. This is particularly important in corporate travel, where speed, clarity, and policy compliance are critical. Together, AI, orchestration, and intelligent filtering can help reduce inefficiencies and improve the value of each interaction, supporting better economics across the travel ecosystem over time. What is changing is not intent to travel, but how travelers evaluate options before booking.”
Amgine head of growth Caitlin Gomez points out that the right intelligence is critical to ending “shopping spiral,”where users keep looking because they aren’t confident, they’ve found the right option.
“The problem isn’t NDC itself, it’s unfiltered NDC content,” Gomez says. “An AI-driven booking-decision engine can help narrow the universe of options before they are presented to the traveler or agent. It can factor in policy, price, preferreds, schedule, traveler preference, loyalty, fare rules, ancillaries, trip purpose, company guidelines, and historical booking behavior. AI can reduce repetitive shopping, eliminate irrelevant results, and move more quickly toward a bookable, compliant option and it can help reduce friction and infrastructure costs for airlines and their partners.”
Gomez explains that AI solutions are the intelligence layer that helps existing travel systems work better. “That, to me, is the biggest difference – and challenge – between leisure and corporate travel. AI shouldn’t just personalize for the traveler. It should personalize within the guardrails of the company’s travel program. A streamlined booking experience can help the traveler feel like the tool understands what they need, while also helping the company maintain control,” she says.
“The opportunity for the industry now is to simplify the decision-making process so travelers can confidently identify the best option faster,” Painter-Bosworth notes. “At this stage, I wouldn’t say NDC has reduced booking demand. At CTM both NDC and EDIFACT bookings continue to grow year-over-year across major carriers. The challenge is less about booking volume and more about servicing complexity. When travelers can quickly identify the best in-policy option with confidence, they are far more likely to remain within the managed program. There’s also the opportunity to clearly identify for travelers the items available outside of policy that they can self-purchase.”
The Bigger Picture
Has NDC hurt or helped?
Ping thinks the answer is neither. “NDC hasn’t impacted the number of bookings that we see,” she says. “We get a mix of NDC, EDIFACT and Low-Cost bookings. The mix of NDC is definitely increasing in certain markets and with some airlines. The total number of bookings are also increasing, so I don’t see that NDC is impacting the demand at all – only the mix.”
For Amgine, NDC impact has also been neutral. “That doesn’t mean the current model is efficient,” Gomez says. “NDC may be improving airline retailing while also increasing operational complexity. Both can be true at the same time. The question isn’t whether richer content is good or bad. The question is whether the industry has built the right intelligence layer to make that content usable. Again, more content can mean more shopping, more confusion, higher costs, and weaker conversion. With the right AI and automation, NDC content can become more actionable. It can move from ‘here are all the options’ to ‘here are the right options for this traveler, this company, and this trip.’ I believe that is the right direction the industry needs to move in.”
For travel management companies, the issue is not that NDC is too much of a good thing but rather corralling the data to relevancy. In the age of machine learning, it seems NDC has a lot to learn. As Gomez explains, the industry is adapting to a more dynamic, retail-driven model, where the focus is shifting from search volume to the value created by each interaction.
