The Navan NDC Savings Index: discover the benefits of scaled NDC utilisation
Ed Brooks
•1 Aug 2024
The topic of NDC has dominated the business travel conversation in recent years. Like any emerging technology, it has had its strong proponents as well as detractors, with many hypothetical arguments for and against. Our new report, the NDC Savings Index, puts the hypotheses to bed and shows that NDC isn’t just the future — NDC is now.
At Navan, we saw the enormous potential of NDC and moved early to enable NDC connections with airlines, including 12 in Europe alone. NDC now accounts for one-third of all flight bookings made in Europe with Navan.
Using three months of booking data, we’ve studied the impact of NDC on our customers. The report uses data to unpack:
- The huge impact NDC utilisation has on company savings and traveller satisfaction
- Why NDC is reducing travel spend — and how much some companies have already saved
- The benefits companies receive from NDC-enabled connections
Key takeaways from the report
Growing adoption, growing satisfaction
Today, of all bookings made by the millions of travellers using Navan, around 1 out of every 4 flights booked is via NDC. In Europe, this figure reaches 1 out of every 3 flights.
Utilisation has increased as our connections have grown. In April 2023, Navan added American Airlines’ NDC to the already-enabled content from Lufthansa Group, followed by Air France, KLM, British Airways, Finnair, Singapore Airlines, and Qantas later that year, and United and Air Canada in early 2024.
As access to NDC was made broadly available, the net promoter score — a measure of customer satisfaction and loyalty — consistently increased month after month. It’s up 13% this year and now sits at 43 for Navan’s flights platform (including post-booking and in-trip). Scores over 30 are deemed great.
The bottom line: when done right, NDC at scale is possible for programmes of any size — without compromising the traveller experience.
Germany leads the way for NDC adoption
Of Navan’s primary markets, Germany leads NDC utilisation, with 45% of flights booked via NDC in May 2024. This is driven in large part by Lufthansa, Austrian Airlines, KLM, and SWISS NDC bookings.
France and the Netherlands, each currently at 31% NDC utilisation, are seeing the most NDC bookings from Air France, KLM, and Lufthansa.
In the United Kingdom, British Airways leads in terms of NDC bookings, followed by Lufthansa, KLM, Air France, and SWISS.
In the U.S., which leads globally in booking volume, NDC currently represents 24% of all flight bookings. Among enabled connections, United Airlines and American Airlines see the most bookings, followed by British Airways and Lufthansa.
The bottom line: a substantial — and growing — share of flight bookings is now via NDC, showing it is very much working and here to stay.
How much are companies saving?
Delaying NDC adoption means significantly increasing travel budgets across all regions.
Large travel programmes with NDC access are seeing six-digit annualised savings, with potential savings of between 3.3% to 16.6% depending on the airline thanks to avoided GDS surcharges as well as access to additional price points and exclusive fares.
Depending on the route, up to 57% of fares published by an airline could be missing from non- NDC-enabled platforms. The impact is more fares outside a system than inside — often leading to leakage and distrust from employees.
Read the report to get many more insights like these, including a detailed breakdown of the overall savings opportunities per airline and a closer look at what NDC looks like with each carrier.
Ready to see how Navan’s NDC connections can ensure your company gets all the air content it needs? Book a demo today.