United and Travelport Redefine Air Travel: A Game-Changing Partnership for Agencies and Corporations

Published on December 6, 2025

The landscape of air travel distribution is undergoing a fundamental shift, and a new, unprecedented alliance is setting the standard. United Airlines and Travelport have entered into a landmark, long-term strategic partnership that moves far beyond the traditional airline-Global Distribution System (GDS) relationship. This collaboration is being hailed as a “new model of collaboration” and is specifically designed to accelerate the adoption and sophistication of New Distribution Capability (NDC) technology, ultimately delivering a richer, more efficient experience for travel agencies and corporate buyers.

For years, the industry’s adoption of NDC—the IATA-led standard meant to modernize airline product retailing—has been hampered by technical friction, particularly for travel management companies (TMCs) and corporate booking platforms. United and Travelport are tackling this challenge head-on, leveraging the next-generation capabilities of Travelport’s unified retailing platform, Travelport+. This agreement is a powerful signal that the future of air travel booking is personalized, flexible, and deeply integrated.

Breaking the Mold: NDC Co-Development and Early Access

The core of this strategic alliance is a commitment to co-development and accelerated innovation. Unlike typical distribution agreements where the GDS simply integrates the airline’s finished product, this partnership involves dedicated technical teams from both United and Travelport working together to build new features.

• Early Access to Roadmap: Travelport gains early access to United’s NDC technology roadmap, ensuring that its platform, Travelport+, remains at the forefront of distributing United’s content. This foresight allows Travelport to prepare its systems and workflows before new features are universally rolled out.
• Deeper Technical Collaboration: The teams are pooling resources to create new capabilities designed specifically for the Travelport+ platform. This direct, deep alignment aims to eliminate the friction that historically slowed down the deployment of advanced NDC functionalities in the agency channel.
• Faster Innovation Cycle: By working in tandem, United and Travelport can accelerate the deployment of new retailing features, ensuring that travel agencies and corporate buyers get access to dynamic offers, bundled fares, and complex post-booking servicing solutions faster than ever before.

This joint development approach fundamentally changes the power dynamic in distribution, transforming the relationship from a transactional supplier-reseller model into a strategic technology partnership.

✨ Enhanced Retailing: What Agencies and Corporate Buyers Get

The true measure of this deal lies in the tangible benefits it delivers to the people booking the travel: the travel counsellors and corporate travel managers. The agreement is focused on delivering innovative Online Booking Tool (OBT) extras and improved servicing capabilities, specifically on Travelport’s Deem OBT platform and within Travelport+.

This move directly addresses the need for “functional parity”—ensuring that the rich content and servicing features previously exclusive to the airline’s direct channel are now fully available and manageable within the GDS ecosystem. This means better transparency, greater choice, and a much smoother booking and management process for the business travel sector.

The Broader Context: Modern Airline Retailing

This partnership is a key indicator that NDC is maturing from a complex technical concept to a commercially viable reality. United’s commitment to continuous pricing—offering 40% more price points than traditional channels—and their drive to merchandise personalized offers necessitates a distribution partner capable of handling that data-rich environment.

• Shift from EDIFACT: The legacy EDIFACT-based GDS standard was built for a simpler era of static fares. NDC, utilizing the modern XML standard, enables real-time, dynamic pricing, and the flexible bundling of services, allowing the airline to act more like a modern e-retailer.
• Prioritization of Innovation: United has clearly prioritised development efforts with third parties who demonstrate an ability to rapidly bring innovations to market. By selecting Travelport as a key strategic partner for co-development, United signals its belief in the Travelport+ platform’s capacity to support this level of modern retailing.

The phased implementation, starting in early 2026 and rolling out throughout the year, is a measured approach designed to ensure travel agencies have the necessary specialised support teams from United during the transition to maximise the value they receive from the new technologies. This focus on smooth adoption is crucial for overcoming the initial resistance and complexity associated with major industry changes.

In summary, the United-Travelport deal is not just an NDC integration; it’s a mutual investment in the future of B2B travel commerce, promising a level of sophistication, service, and choice that the traditional distribution model simply couldn’t deliver.