The Biz at BTN Podcast · Business Travel News

The Winners' Circle - Best Practitioner Oracle's Brian Hendrickson

·31 min·1 clip

Three weeks before American Airlines pulled EDIFACT support, Oracle realized their TMC wasn't ready to launch at scale—so they offered to do the legwork themselves.

Oracle's Director of Travel Operations and his team successfully launched NDC (New Distribution Capability) distribution within their legacy travel ecosystem in just 3 weeks, following American Airlines' EDIFACT channel shutdown. They partnered with GetThere, CWT, and Sabre to enable a touchless booking-to-ticketing process. Rather than wait for a 'modern' system overhaul, they leveraged existing relationships, implemented a rigorous testing discipline, and deployed first on the online channel only as a safety valve. By go-live, they had achieved seamless traveler experience while maintaining full operational control.

As heard by us

A practical look at NDC adoption inside a legacy travel program.

Oracle Travel's push to make NDC function inside a legacy system rather than wait for a full rebuild gives the discussion its edge. Brian Hendrickson and Sherry Hornick keep it grounded in operations: the tradeoffs, the A-B testing around search display, and the early results…

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Why you'd press play

You want the mechanics behind NDC adoption, not a glossy overview.

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