How a Dubai-Based OTA Accessed Emirates Direct Fares and Grew Margins by 18% with Amadeus Enterprise + NDC

A mid-sized Online Travel Agency operating in the UAE and GCC market transformed their fare distribution strategy, eliminating GDS surcharge losses and surfacing airline-direct pricing that competing travel agencies could not access.

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A Growing OTA Facing a Fare Access Problem

The client is a Dubai-based Online Travel Agency serving retail travelers and corporate travel managers across the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and broader GCC markets. With over 120 travel agents operating on their platform and a high volume of intra-Middle East and intercontinental bookings, fare margins on Emirates-operated routes were a constant source of revenue leakage.

While the agency had an existing Amadeus GDS setup for flight search and booking, they had no access to Emirates' NDC channel. This meant every booking went through traditional GDS EDIFACT flows, missing airline-direct fares, bundled ancillaries, and exclusive NDC-only offers that Emirates had progressively moved outside the legacy GDS environment.

They approached OneClick IT Consultancy after evaluating multiple vendors. Their requirement: a production-grade Amadeus API integration that would bridge their existing GDS stack with the NDC channel, without replacing booking workflows or retraining agents from scratch.

Our certified Amadeus experts assessed the setup, mapped fare leakage points, and designed an integration architecture that layered Amadeus NDC capabilities directly into the existing agent desktop and back-office stack.

Problem Statement

Key Pain Points

No access to NDC-exclusive Emirates fares. Promotional, bundled Economy, and Business cabin offers were invisible through the legacy GDS EDIFACT path, resulting in lost bookings to NDC-enabled competitors.
GDS segment fees accumulated on high-volume routes including DXB-LHR, DXB-BOM, and DXB-JFK, with no ability to route eligible bookings through a lower-cost direct channel.
Ancillary revenue was entirely absent. Seat selection, extra baggage, and meal preferences were unavailable through EDIFACT for many fare families, leaving upsell opportunity unrealised.
Fragmented back-office reconciliation between GDS records and airline billing caused frequent settlement errors that grew more costly with booking volume.

Key Metrics

NDC fare access on EK routes↓0%

Avg. net margin on EK bookings↓~9.5%

Bookings via GDS EDIFACT only↑ 100%

Monthly reconciliation time↑ ~40 hrs

Ancillary revenue per EK booking↓ £0

The Solution

Amadeus NDC Channel Layer

We connected the agency’s booking infrastructure to Amadeus’s NDC-enabled fare pipeline for Emirates, using the Amadeus Travel APIs (v2) to enable real-time search, price verification, and booking across both EDIFACT and NDC fare families from a single interface. Our Amadeus integration specialists handled all certification and testing cycles with the Amadeus Enterprise test environment before production deployment.

Intelligent Fare Routing Engine

A fare routing logic layer was built to compare available fares across both GDS and NDC channels in parallel at search time. When an NDC fare offered a better net yield after segment fee comparison, it was surfaced as the preferred option. Travel agents retained full visibility and control. The system recommended, agents confirmed. This was critical for agencies with corporate fare contracts that needed to take priority over NDC offers.

Ancillary Services via NDC Offers API

Using the Amadeus Offers and Orders API over the NDC channel, Emirates ancillary services such as seat maps, extra baggage, and meal preferences were enabled directly within the agent booking flow. Agents could add and confirm ancillaries at the point of booking without leaving the platform, with all data passed to the airline in a single Order transaction.

Unified Order Management and Reconciliation

A consolidated order management module was built to normalise data from both GDS PNR flows and NDC Order flows into a single back-office record structure. This eliminated the dual reconciliation process, reduced settlement errors, and gave the operations team a single source of truth for all booking data, regardless of which channel originated the transaction.

Our Approach

Discover

GDS setup audit
Fare leakage analysis on EK routes
Agent workflow interviews
Emirates NDC eligibility review

Deliverable:

GDS Audit Report, Fare Gap Analysis

Define

API architecture design
NDC channel selection strategy
Routing logic specification
Ancillary scope documentation

Deliverable:

Integration Blueprint, API Scope Matrix

Build & Certify

Amadeus NDC API development
Fare routing engine build
Amadeus sandbox certification
Agent UI component updates

Deliverable:

Certified API Integration, QA Sign-off

Deploy & Optimise

Phased production rollout
Agent training sessions
Margin performance tracking
Reconciliation module go-live

Deliverable:

Live Integration, 30-day Post-Go-Live Report

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Team Structure

Role	Responsibility
Project Manager	Delivery planning, stakeholder communication, milestone tracking, risk management
Amadeus Solutions Architect	NDC API architecture design, GDS integration review, channel routing logic specification
Senior Backend Developer	API integration build, fare routing engine, order management module development
Frontend Developer	Agent UI updates, ancillary booking components, seat map integration
QA Engineer	Amadeus sandbox testing, end-to-end booking flow validation, regression testing
Business Analyst	Fare gap analysis, requirement documentation, reconciliation workflow design

Technology Used

Frontend

React.js

Backend

NodeJS

ExpressJS

Other Services

PostgreSQL
Square API
Twilio API
Google Calendar API

Languages

JavaScript

TypeScript

Framework

Angular Universal
PrimeNG
AngularJS
jQuery

Bootstrap

Angular Material

Frontend

HTML5

CSS3 / SCSS / LESS

Backend Technologies

NodeJS

.Net

API

REST
GraphQL
SOAP

Architecture

MVC
Micro services
Micro front end
Component-Based
Modular
SPA
Hybrid

Database

PostgreSQL

Tools and Build Systems

NPM / Yarn
Gulp / Grunt
Webpack / Browserify
Bower

Version Control Systems

GitHub
GitLab
Bitbucket

Testing Frameworks and Tools

Jasmine
Karma
Protractor
Mocha / Chai
Sinon

Project Management Tools

Jira
ClickUp
Trello
Asana

UI Design Frameworks

Material Design
Bootstrap
Foundation
Semantic UI

Caching and Performance Optimization

Lazy Loading
Code Splitting
Redis
Minimizing Watchers
$digest cycle optimizations
Angular $cacheFactory

Deployment and Automation Tools

Jenkins (CI/CD)
GitLab CI/CD
CircleCI
Docker (for containerization)

Security

Preventing XSS (Cross-Site Scripting)
CSRF Protection
$sce for context based escaping
JWT

Application Performance Monitoring

New Relic
Sentry
Lighthouse

Cloud Servers

AWS
Google cloud platform

Knowledge about Cloud Services

AWS S3
Firebase Hosting
Azure Blob Storage

Experience with Third-Party Services

Google Maps API
Facebook SDK
Stripe
SendGrid

Build and Deployment Tools

Angular CLI
Bower
Vercel / Netlify

UX and Design Tools

Figma
Adobe XD
Sketch

Real-Time App Tools

Socket.IO
SignalR

AI Development Tools

GitHub Copilot
ChatGPT

Why NDC Access Changed This Agency’s Market Position

Parameter	Before (GDS Only)	After (Amadeus + NDC)
Emirates Fare Access	GDS EDIFACT fares only; NDC fare families not visible	Full GDS + NDC fare options surfaced in parallel at search
Ancillary Services	Not available for most EK fare families via GDS	Seat, baggage, and meal services bookable within agent flow
Cost per Booking	Full GDS segment fee on every EK booking	Eligible bookings routed via NDC, reducing segment fee by 22%
Agent Experience	Single-channel search; manual price-check vs EK.com	Multi-channel results in one interface; best-yield fare highlighted
Reconciliation	Dual manual process across GDS records and airline billing	Unified order management normalising GDS and NDC data
Net Margin (EK Routes)	~9.5% average	~26–29% on NDC-eligible routes (+18% blended)

Project Outcomes (Targets)

+18% Overall Net Booking Margin

Average net margin per Emirates booking grew from approximately 9.5% to 27.3% on NDC-eligible routes, lifting the blended margin across all EK bookings by 18 percentage points over the 6-month measurement period.

+34% Emirates Fare Options Available

The number of distinct fare offers visible to travel agents at search time increased by 34%, including promotional fares and bundled cabin options that had been invisible through the legacy GDS path.

-22% GDS Segment Fee Spend

By routing a meaningful portion of Emirates bookings through the NDC channel, the agency reduced its total GDS segment fee expenditure by 22% over the measurement period.

3.1× ROI on Integration Investment

Total return on the integration cost (development, certification, and deployment) tracked at 3.1× within the first six months of production, driven primarily by margin recovery on high-volume DXB routes.

-68% Reconciliation Time

The unified order management layer reduced monthly reconciliation workload from approximately 40 hours to 13 hours, a 68% reduction in administrative overhead.

+41% Ancillary Revenue Per Booking

With Emirates ancillary services available within the agent booking flow, ancillary revenue per completed booking on NDC-channel transactions grew by 41% compared to zero ancillary capture in the prior GDS-only period.