In February 2020, ARC and Amadeus announced a new cooperative agreement to enable the continued growth of sales between airlines and travel agencies in North America. This agreement is a continuation of the existing relationship between the two organizations and will further implementation of the industry’s evolving airline retailing technology standards — including New Distribution Capability (NDC).

For decades, ARC and Amadeus have worked together to ensure seamless booking and settlement solutions for the air travel community. As evidenced by a record-breaking $97.4 billion in U.S. air sales in 2019, travel agencies continue to thrive — and GDSs such as Amadeus play an integral role.

As airline products become more differentiated and customizable, technologies like NDC will become increasingly important to the agency community, which will require access to a greater breadth of products through a centralized platform. For its part, Amadeus is heavily investing in its NDC [X] program to drive greater adoption of the XML standard.

In 2018, ARC implemented NDC retailing functionality that provides flexible transaction processing, workflows, billing and settlement, and outputs that seamlessly support a wide variety of distribution models.

ARC is continuing its development of NDC technology to further benefit travel bookings in the travel agency channel. Earlier this month, ARC announced the availability of the ARC Ticketing Authority API™, service that enables airlines to instantly confirm U.S.-based travel agencies’ ARC accreditation status and ticketing authority. British Airways is the first airline to use this new function as part of its NDC strategy.

ARC offers guidelines for both airlines and agencies interested in getting started with NDC.

To learn more about ARC’s agreement with Amadeus, read the full release here.