Salesforce's Dorian Stonie is a BTN 2024 Best Practitioner
Best Practitioner: Dorian Stonie, Salesforce Senior Director of Global Travel
Best Practice: Driving, monitoring and facilitating his company's New Distribution Capability evolution across the travel ecosystem with partners Concur, American Express Global Business Travel, American Airlines and United Airlines. Salesforce turned on American NDC June 17 in the United States, and a month later saw 14 percent of AA fares booked through NDC. The company turned on United NDC July 1, and within three weeks, had more than 30 percent of those bookings going through NDC connections. About 35 percent of the company's NDC bookings reflect savings against EDIFACT fares, Stonie said. United's continuous pricing provides the lion's share of those savings, and Stonie projects that continuously priced fares alone (not necessarily all on United) will save Salesforce about $1 million for the full year.
BTN: Why and how did you pursue NDC?
Dorian Stonie: We are a traveler-centric company, and for us it was to deliver the richer [NDC] content. With Concur coming out with T2 in October of last year, we immediately said we wanted to be in the initial user groups. When American announced they were going to implement NDC in April of 2023, we knew we were going to need to integrate that into our program ASAP being omnichannel. We could access a lot of that content through TripLink if employees were finding a differential. But then in July of last year, we became [Amex GBT's] first pilot program for [American's] offline [U.S.] NDC content, reservations and support. By October 2023, we moved all our offline to NDC. Then T2 launched with all 40,000 of our travelers. Feedback was minimal. Both Amex GBT and Concur did a great job at responding to any challenges we were having.
Six months later, we had 60,000 transactions booked through Concur with no major issues, and a continued improvement of features and enhancements being added, so we decided the system was prepared to integrate NDC.
What were the challenges?
Stonie: The challenges were making sure that our TMC and OBT and the airlines were aligned. What took time is getting your online booking tool ready. We worked with all our respective TMC and Concur teams to make sure the transactions flowed through the mid- and back-office systems. One of the things we found very helpful was we held twice-weekly calls with our TMC, Concur and ultimately with each of the carriers so that we had everyone sitting down at the table all together. It was instrumental to our success.
What might account for the difference between your American and United numbers?
Stonie: Within Concur T2, if an NDC fare is lower, it will automatically book NDC. If an EDIFACT fare is lower, it will book it. If the fares are equal, Concur defaults to booking in EDIFACT. For American, one of the reasons it would have been much higher [in May] is American's [distribution] reversal and their moving a lot of the NDC content back into EDIFACT. As a result, the systems were defaulting to EDIFACT [bookings]. With United, we have continuous pricing, which brings up lower-priced offers on a more regular basis. That is a huge success because 30 percent-plus of our reservations are being booked at lower fares than if they were through our legacy processes. Then the thing I love is how many times the amount of 'I found it cheaper on the web' types of comments is going down.
What are your NDC goals?
Stonie: Our first goal is to get T2 rolled out to all countries by the end of the year with the new interface, which is the foundation for that NDC journey. [Salesforce's T2 currently is rolled out in the U.S. and Canada.] We now are focused on launching T2 in Europe, the Middle East and Africa in Q3, and then Asia-Pacific and Latin America in Q4. The importance of EMEA is then we can start initiating discussions with the European carriers on how to integrate and activate [their] NDC content. After that, you start activating NDC as it becomes available with respective airlines.
Phase three will be optimizing NDC, and that's where the fare bundles and the personalized offers come it. That will likely start the beginning of next year. Instead of [price searches] coming back with 200 fare options, it should know your status and your preferences and come back with the top five or 10 options.
Phase four, within the next 12 months, is when the really cool stuff starts. That's when you lay AI over and integrate machine learnings to create personal options for [travelers], not only on airfare, but hotel bundles and everything else. They won't have to piece together separate air, hotel, car bookings, and [we'll be] delivering a better product with increased productivity and increased employee satisfaction. We want to provide transparency, full content and be a trusted one-source shop. We want travelers using our system because they want to, not because we mandate it.