Kenya’s national carrier, Kenya Airways (KQ), has announced the launch of a New Distribution Capabilities (NDC) system as part of its indirect sales platform to enhance the airline’s offering to travel agencies and travelers to empower them to sell and access more content and ancillaries like extra baggage and preferred seats.
Supported by the International Air Transport Association (IATA), the web-based distribution solution seeks to modernize the way air products are retailed to travel agents, corporations, and travelers. The new solution aims at improving the customer experience for travel agents with a better service offering that has more data and gives them a chance to interact directly with the airline without an intermediary. This in turn ensures that the customers get tailored offers that match their preferences and travel history.
Julius Thairu, Chief Commercial & Customer Officer at Kenya Airways said: “We’re proud to be the first African carrier to integrate with NDC at scale as part of our commitment to customer centricity that upholds innovation, insights, and interconnectivity for improved customer experiences. Our mandate as the pride of Africa is to understand our customers’ needs and align our products and services to address their end-to-end experience throughout their customer journey.”
KQ said travel advisors around the globe will enjoy access to Kenya Airways NDC content through the Verteil Technologies platform that offers agents more personalized shopping experiences and access to customer information, pricing autonomy, rich content offers, ancillaries, and discounts, product differentiation, and reduced reliance on legacy systems.
“Our new agreement with Verteil is an exciting addition to the NDC solution, creating greater opportunities for all partners in the travel ecosystem. In addition, the agreement ensures access to KQ content is the same as any content an agency or other seller would get from any other intermediary or aggregator and this supports our vision of moving towards a more innovative way of travel retailing,” he added.
Jerrin Jos, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Verteil Technologies, said: “We are delighted to be the launch aggregator partner for Kenya Airways, who are at the forefront of NDC distribution in the Africa region, through the deployment of a specific Kenya Airways NDC Agency Portal & Verteil’s NDC Aggregator platform having unique access to KQ’s exciting NDC offers.
This partnership is a testament to the critical role Verteil is playing when it comes to the development and promotion of NDC content distribution worldwide. With Kenya Airways being a significant player in the African aviation market, we believe that KQ will be able to benefit from the superior direct booking capability, allowing the airline to work directly with Travel Agencies worldwide without constraints from legacy distribution channels. Africa is a focus market for Verteil and, we are quite excited to be facilitating the adoption of NDC technology significantly in this region”.