I always enjoy Christmas, but this year I’m looking forward to the festive season even more than usual. 

My granddaughter has turned two, so this will be the first Christmas where she will understand that something special is going on.

I can’t wait to see her, Rocky the cat and the three dogs all rushing around, knocking over the tree and causing general mayhem.

We tend to do things quite traditionally at Schloss Wylie. I will cook the biggest turkey I can find in a 30-mile radius of Lowestoft. Then it’s Christmas pudding, over which I will chuck half a gallon of brandy because we Wylies believe the longer the pud burns the luckier our family will be in the year to come.

While your own Christmas pudding is alight, perhaps, like me, you’ll cast your mind back over the year just passed.

I’ve reflected a lot on AI, for example, which has seen a shift from generative AI to agentic AI advancing automation capabilities benefiting things like real-time flight disruption management.

Agentic AI can rebook flights, adjust hotel reservations, and update itineraries instantly without human intervention, which is a real game changer for the industry. 

AI also offers huge operational efficiencies and deeper personalisation, but there is also a darker side too, for example cybercrime.

AI can enable attackers to automate every stage of the cyber kill chain from reconnaissance to exploitation at speeds humans can’t ever achieve, which is keeping all of us techies on our toes.

“Call me the Grinch, but I’m dubious if NDC will ever really rocket as intended”

One element I cannot ignore is travel’s age-old friend: NDC, which reminds me of A Christmas Carol’s Ghost of Christmas Past, having haunted some for 15 years now.

Despite reports of much bigger figures by others, we’re seeing the percentage of business air bookings made through NDC plateauing at around 20%.

Call me the Grinch, but I’m dubious if it will ever really rocket as intended.

NDC still isn’t being used much to book lounge access, baggage allowances, meals and all those other extras we were promised, certainly not in negotiated bundles.

It works fine for booking seats, and yes, one advantage is you can book more intermediate price points, but it can still be clunky if you want to make any post-booking changes or cancellations.

The other problem is that airlines haven’t standardised NDC enough, leaving TMCs having to build complicated, separate connections to each carrier, or turn for help to aggregators that increasingly look like the GDSs whose stranglehold the airlines wanted to break in the first place.

Perhaps we should we take a fresh look at NDC in 2026, because it really is about time we removed the “New” from New Distribution Capability.

What will be 2026’s gift that keeps on giving? I do wonder…tripstax.com

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