Finnair becomes the first European airline to modernize airline product sales using NDC with TravelS
Finnair, a leading airline connecting Europe and Asia and TravelSky, the leading airline product distribution system in China, have developed a connection using IATA's New Distribution Capability to ensure a modern and efficient distribution of Finnair offering to TravelSky customers in China. Finnair now becomes the first European airline to build NDC connection to TravelSky. The first live connection was launched in June 2020 with Tongcheng-Elong Holdings Limited, a leading online travel service provider, as a partner selling Finnair´s NDC content.
With NDC Connection through TravelSky, Chinese travel agencies will gain easy access to Finnair's full portfolio of ancillary products from extra baggage to pre-order meals, which enable personalization of the flight experience for their customers.
"We are looking forward to engage our travel agent partners in modernizing airline product distribution for the benefit of our customers", says Ole Orvér, Chief Commercial Officer, Finnair. "NDC with TravelSky will enable us to provide all our ancillary offering to our Chinese customers, which benefits both travel agencies in terms of a wider product offering and our Chinese travelers, who can better personalize their journeys with Finnair."
"Tongcheng-Elong continues cooperating with the world's outstanding airlines, relying on our own technology and traffic advantages, to provide users better travel services and promote the innovation of global travel online service", says Wang Qiang, Chief Operating Officer of Tongcheng-Elong.
Finnair is part of the IATA NDC Leaderboard airlines group committed to drive NDC adoption and transforming the way the travel industry value chain works. Finnair was recently certified by IATA at the NDC @scale level and now offers full booking and servicing capabilities through its NDC API. More information on Finnair's NDC journey on www.finnair.com/easy.
China continues to play a key role in Finnair strategy, and Finnair re-opened its passenger flights to Shanghai in July. Finnair also flies to Nanjing in September and October and looks forward to increasing its service for the Chinese market. Finnair offers smooth connections to dozens of European destinations via its Helsinki hub.
Finnair
Finnair is a modern premium network airline, specialising in passenger and cargo traffic between Asia and Europe. Helsinki's geographical location gives Finnair a competitive advantage, since the fastest connections between many European destinations and Asian megacities fly over Finland. Finnair is the only Nordic network carrier with a 4-star Skytrax ranking and a member of the oneworld alliance. In 2019, Finnair's revenues amounted to EUR 3,098 million and it carried over 14.7 million passengers. Finnair Plc's shares are quoted on the Nasdaq Helsinki stock exchange.
TravelSky
TravelSky is the leading IT provider in China's civil aviation market that keeps up with the technology trend of international civil aviation markets and carries out localization and application with active innovation in combination with the actual situation of the Chinese market.
TravelSky has become the first batch of technology provider in the world that have obtained all of the highest-level certifications for NDC and One Order in the IATA. TravelSky will join hands with key enterprises in the aviation industry to establish an NDC community NDC PLUS.
Tongcheng-Elong Holdings Limited
Recognized as a great innovator and market leader in China's online travel industry, Tongcheng-eLong is the result of the March 2018 merger of Tongcheng Network under Tongcheng Group and eLong. On November 26 in the same year, Tongcheng-eLong was successfully listed on the main board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (stock code: 0780.HK).
Tongcheng-eLong is committed to building a one-stop online travel platform that provides services from transportation ticket booking (air tickets, train tickets, bus tickets, ferry tickets, etc.), to accommodation reservation, to attraction ticket booking, and a range of other value-added services across multiple travel scenarios. With more than 200 million MAUs, Tongcheng-eLong is one of the two largest online travel agencies in China.
On April 22, 2020, Tongcheng-eLong launched its new service brand "ly.com", and introduced a new logo and slogan, proclaiming "Together, let's go!". These efforts reflect our ambition to provide services with a youthful mindset for more users.