In a bid to devise more customer-specific offers, foundation for innovation in travel booking and accounting processes is being chalked out by the International Air Transport Association (IATA), which has started with ONE Order initiative to modernize its member airlines’ flight booking and accounting processes. Under this initiative, Lufthansa’s ONE Order certification from IATA follows the successful completion of a one-year pilot project at the airline in collaboration with Lufthansa Systems, said a statement by the airline.

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The IATA move will enable member airlines to align their products even more closely to customers’ needs and substantially simplify the customer’s booking experience. Under the ONE Order approach, the customer is issued a single reference number for their journey, known as their Order ID, that covers all their flight and supplementary product documents (which have previously been handled separately), according to Lufthansa. 

ONE Order thus allows all the travel products and services for a particular trip – even those of other providers such as partner airlines or third parties such as hotels and car rental companies – to be fully integrated under a single booking reference number. The adoption of ONE Order has been made possible by IATA’s New Distribution Capability (NDC) standard, which is using the XML standard to modernize the systems communications between airlines and other travel service providers.

Christian Popp, the Lufthansa Group’s Head of Distribution and Revenue Management Strategy & Business Intelligence, said “We are very pleased to have become the first airline in the world to obtain this ONE Order certification,” adding “With the new ONE Order standard, we can even better address our customers’ needs, tap new potential and create added value together with our system partners within the travel market. This latest development is also further confirmation of the leading role that the Lufthansa Group continues to play in innovation terms, and marks another major step towards the airline sales of tomorrow.”

Yanik Hoyles, IATA’s Director of Industry Distribution Programs, said “We congratulate the Lufthansa Group on becoming the first airline group to earn our ONE Order certification,” adding “With their NDC and ONE Order involvement, the Lufthansa Group is helping to take our industry further along the road to a modern digital retail experience.”

The one year project’s objective was to conduct the entire product offer and booking process solely on the basis of the NDC and ONE Order standards. As part of the long-standing involvement of the Lufthansa Group in helping to develop new industry standards, the project’s feedback and findings were shared with both IATA and industry partners, the statement said.

Notably, the Lufthansa Group works continually to develop and refine new technological solutions that can sustainably enhance the processes involved to offer a travel booking experience that is tailored as closely as possible to the individual customer’s needs, it added.