Northstar

4 | www.travelweekly-asia.com INDUSTRY VOICES Stephen Shurrock is Travelport's excutive vice president and chief commercial officer. He leads teams in Air, Agency, Hospitality and Digital Media around the world and is the global lead for customer engagement, product strategy, marketing and mar - ket research. Shurrock was previously CE for the Consumer Division of Telefonica, one of the largest telecom- munications companies. 10 16 6 We've come a long way since I presented Travelport's first New Distribution Capability (NDC) roadmap, working through our NDC milestones on all fronts: • With our airline customers, who are gradually changing to NDC content distribution • With our agency customers, who are making changes to be NDC- ready • Across our product and technology teams, we work hard to ensure Travelport is the choice partner for the NDC era We completed the first NDC booking through a DS last ctober and have recently onboarded more travel agencies, both large and small, who are receiving NDC content as we pilot agents through Travelport Smartpoint. We're committed to ensuring NDC works for everyone, so we shared our insights after our first few weeks offering NDC content and answered our customers' most frequently asked NDC questions. Here are key milestones we're looking forward to reaching in 2019: PROVIDING TRAVEL CHOICE THROUGH CONTENT In many ways, NDC is just a new version of what we've always done at Travelport: providing choice to our demand-side customers through relevant, bookable content from whichever distribution method a supplier chooses to connect to us. Already, we have five airlines live and supplying NDC content into our platform. ou can expect to see more airlines coming on board throughout 2019, including several more in the next few months. DELIVERING OPTIMAL PERFORMANCE In some instances, NDC is an update to technology which has been in operation for three or four decades. My colleague from Travelport's architecture team, Stu Waldron recently shared his view of the 'plumbing' going on behind the scenes to get ready for the NDC era. During 201, we moved to the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) methodology for our product organisation to better serve our customers. We've taken customer comments on board and passed them directly to our product team to be built into the next versions of our products. SUPPORTING AGENT WORKFLOW For travel agents, booking NDC content is a change to established ways of working. By making NDC content available through Travelport Smartpoint, we've provided access to greater choice with NDC content which can be combined with ATPCo content in a familiar workflow. We'll be extending access to NDC content to Smartpoint connected agents throughout 2019 and our NDC API Trip Services will be available early in H2 2019. LEADING AN INTELLIGENT CONVERSATION ur commitment to leading a New Distribution Conversation hasn't changed with the new year. ou'll see our leaders discussing NDC at major industry events throughout 2019, as we continue to deliver NDC for our customers and more webinars for our customers and the wider travel industry. We'll also be inviting customers to some of our regional hubs to discuss their approach to NDC. The work in 2019, from connecting NDC-ready airlines to delivering our point of sale solutions, is essential to deliver IATA's 2020 goals. CONTENTS 5 HOSPITALITY: IHG scores a 'coup' in wellness with Six Senses acquisition 11 CRUISE: RCL's Angie Stephen shares her passion 12 PRODUCT: TECHNOLOGY Powering the skies with new innovations 14 DESTINATION: MALAYSIA Malaysia heralds a comeback 17 BEST OF GLOBAL WRAP: The best of the news across Asia Pacific Above: Chocolate Hills under blue sky in Bohol, the Philippines Left: Silver Cloud will visit Antarctica on its world cruise. Below: The WYSIWYG CAFÉ at COSI Samui Chaweng Beach. Delivering NDC – our 2019 roadmap

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