Why African Carriers Are Moving Slowly on NDC
Slow NDC adoption in Africa is routinely explained as a technology problem. It is not. The real constraints are financial, commercial, and institutional, and they reinforce each other in ways that make technical solutions, on their own, irrelevant.
NEWS BRIEFS
Hotel Distribution’s NDC Moment? SiteMinder Bets on AI Booking Channels
SiteMinder announced on Wednesday that it is opening its hotel distribution platform to AI-driven booking channels, a move that positions the company at the centre of what may be the most significant structural shift in accommodation commerce since the OTA boom of the early 2000s.
FlySafair’s Kirby Gordon: “We Want to Be the Most Accessible and Dependable Option in the Market”
Kirby Gordon, Chief Marketing Officer of FlySafair, is not interested in industry fashion. He does not talk about transformation for its own sake, and does not pretend that every technology development in airline distribution is equally relevant to a domestic LCC operating in South Africa.
The Velocity Gap in African OTAs Just Narrowed. Wakanow Moved First.
The company’s Group CEO says 80% of its code is AI-assisted and sprint cycles have compressed from two weeks to three days. The first claim explains how the second might be possible. Both demand scrutiny.
NDC Broke the Ticketing Stack. Payments Are Still Catching Up.
For the better part of a decade, the airline industry’s defining strategic battle was over offer control. Who builds the fare? Who owns the content? Who decides what the traveler sees?
NDC crosses 1-in-5 agency bookings as corporate travel joins the mainstream
New data from ARC and Accelya shows NDC has moved from pilot to production across agency and managed travel, with SAP Concur recording its millionth NDC booking in Q1 2026.
MCP Won’t Kill NDC. It Will Make It Irrelevant. And Africa Will Feel It First.
The airline distribution industry has a habit of fighting the last war. For years, the central conflict was between airlines and GDSs: who controls the offer, who captures the margin, who owns the relationship with the traveler.
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Gustave Sugira
Founder and Editor-in-Chief
Travel Distribution News
Kigali, Rwanda