Travelport, Global Head of Travel Partners, Damian Hickey at the CAPA Airline Leader Summit, Airlines in Transition 2026

Transcript

Damian Hickey:NDC has been around for a decade. We've all invested heavily in NDC, new APIs, new workflows. The challenge is that NDC was designed to create simplicity, but in actuality, because airlines have implemented different ways, it's actually created a lot of complexity. So still the jury's still out to see if we're going to get a return from that investment. We need to get simplified, we need to unify, and we need to defragment the content that's fragmented today. I think there was an expectation by many of the airlines that just connecting to an NDC API would unlock all of this new retailing capability. But the reality is, in order to unlock that capability, You have to do it in a much simpler way. You have to make sure that it's easy to unlock retailing. People want choice. Agents need to be able to compare NDC offers and Edifact traditional offers side by side so they can give their customer choice. And if they can give that choice, they create that trust, which ultimately is what's unlocked that retailing value. Yeah, I think it comes back to that point that just unlocking NDC and giving access to more content will automatically unlock all of that value. NDC created the promise of giving more personalization to make servicing simpler, and all of that ultimately was to generate more revenue. But in order to do that, you have to do it in a much more unified way. You need to normalize it so you make that workflow easier. So today, when you're an agent trying to service a traveler, you've now got to go to multiple different paths in order to be able to do that, and that just creates a complexity that drives up cost, not brings it down. So I think really it is to provide a solution that not just meets the need of the airline, but all of the infrastructure of our industry. I think it is that point about looking at it much more holistically, not just from an airline perspective, not just from a technology provider perspective or an agent perspective. We need to look at how we're servicing the traveler right across that that journey. And if we do that, I think that's really what's going to make the difference, because ultimately it's to provide a better service, a more trusted, reliable experience to the traveler. And if we take that view, I think that's where the real opportunity is. I think to show the money, to see that return on the promise of NDC and of modern retailing, really it means a couple of things. We've got to enable faster bookings. All right. We've not— we've got to simplify it. And we have to be smarter if we're going to provide a better retail experience. And we should learn from other industries. We've got to be smarter how we do it. We've got to give the tools to both the traveler and to the agents and to airlines to do it smarter, to do it faster, and to do it simpler. Then that will really unlock that return on investment because right now it's just too fragmented and it's too complicated. Fragmentation, which— when we're saying about fragmentation, we're talking about the fragmentation of content. Right today in our industry, you know, there's so much more content out there. There's so many more fares, so many different bundles are being available. The challenge right now is that content is now distributed over many, many different sources. So if you're a traveler going to your preferred way that you want to buy travel, that, that travel agent, an online travel agent or a traditional agent, for example, that agent now has to go and find all these multiple different sources. Because it's been fragmented in order to provide that choice. So if they're to provide that trusted experience to the traveler, they need to get all that content in one place. So right now, that fragmentation really is what's destroying the value in the equation because that's just, again, adding in complexity and adding in cost. I think it's really critical so that we can bring all of the content in one place, in one workflow. That's what normalization is all about. We need to make all of the complexity behind the scenes about the fact that different airlines are delivering their content in different ways. We need to isolate that. And the only way to do that is to normalize that, to bring it in one standard way where all the content is in one place. The agent can go through one workflow regardless of airline, regardless of traveler, regardless of segment. That's really what we believe will unlock profit. That's the real profit formula. To unlock that value. Technology provides that new capability of being able to get that connectivity through a more standardized modern API. That gives you access to content. But modern retailing is not just about more content, right? It's about having that trusted experience. So you have all the content in one place and that it's delivered more efficiently, right? That gives the opportunity to make bookings faster, to make servicing easier, to be able to upsell opportunities, to add in more ancillaries, that's when you start to unlock the real value. So yes, the connectology and connectivity, it's a first step, but that's just table stakes. Next, you need to build on true retailing on top of that. From an agency perspective, it clearly brings much more efficiencies, right? So if agents are having a very efficient way to get access to all the content in one place, through a simple standardized workflow, it frees up that operational time so they can service on their primary job, which is being that trusted source of content and experience for their travelers. So they absolutely— that will build loyalty and that will ultimately bring more revenue for the agency. From the airline perspective, if they can deliver those differentiated offers in a much simpler way to the agent, that does create that trusted experience and gives that opportunity to, to upsell, to cross-sell and generate more revenue. So those 2 factors working hand in hand really is what can deliver that, unlock that value. I think for me, the one lesson they should take away is they need to stand back and look at NDC and the journey to modern retailing as an industry initiative. All right. And not just look at it from an airline-centric perspective, but look at all of the stakeholders, Whether they're the airline, their agency partners, and ultimately the traveler. And if they take a step, a little step back from that and look at that entire journey, I think that's really, I think, the learning that they can get to see where the real value can be unlocked quicker. Yeah, look, we were very, very excited in the last couple of weeks to go out with, with that public statement for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it really signaled the next step in the evolution of the growth of Travelport. It was important, I think, that just to— we're a private company. We were taken private equity about 7, 8 years ago. And because of that, you know, we do not have to publish our financial results. So we thought it was important, particularly with a lot of noise in the market today, to be a little bit more transparent about how well we're doing financially. And, you know, we ask— we are— our profit growth has gone up about 12%. You know, year on year was really positive. But there are a couple of other elements that were part of that. You know, over the last 5, 6 years, we've been on a transformation journey in kind of building out our modern technology stack, moving to what we call Travelport Plus, which is really an upgrade to our platforms. And that really signaled that we're at the end of that journey. So we've been working on building that new modern platform, a platform that's built for scale, A platform that's built for modern APIs, a platform upon which, as we move to an AI-centric travel experience, that one thing we learned is that AI relies upon having a trusted, scalable source of travel content. And we believe we built out that platform. The $50 million investment really was just a show of confidence, you know, from our, our owners and our sponsors. And it was really put there to help us accelerate that next step of our journey. Having now built the baseline platform is now to accelerate that, to accelerate it in AI, to accelerate that modern retailing. So it was really, really exciting that, you know, we could come out with that announcement. We have been partners with CAPA for many, many years. Actually, I think I was here in Berlin 8 years ago at a CAPA event. But look, one of the things we really do value from the CAPA events is that's one of— it's actually one of the unique events where it actually does bring all of the stakeholders in the industry together in a very common forum. And, you know, that's really, really valuable to us because to be really successful in transforming our industry, we really need to have that dialogue. So we have airlines, we have technology companies, we have airports, we have agents all coming together for a common goal. And I think that's what really we value from CAPA because it works across the entire industry. There are other events that may be very airline-centric or airport-centric, This is one of those unique events which kind of crosses the entire industry. So that's really what we see the value in.

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