Amadeus: Agents must pay for solutions
GBTA Conference special: Amadeus claimed it could provide all the air fares agents needed but warned they would have to pay for it.
The GDS’s European vice-president commercial David Jones admitted that levels of content offered were currently unacceptable.
“We cannot get all the air content you and we need at today’s booking fee levels,” he admitted.
“We could put the low-cost airlines on for a minimal or zero fee, but if we do that how can we justify charges to bmi or other airlines?
”Costs have to be more evenly distributed between airlines, ourselves and travel management companies.
“You need full airline content and you’re currently getting low-cost fares by using screen scraper technology or getting employees to search web. That is a cost but we can deliver that at a lower cost to you than you are currently paying.”
Guild of Business Travel Agents chairman Richard Lovell, speaking on behalf of his company Carlson Wagonlit Travel, refuted Jones’ claim.
“We’re not standing still, we’re doing that already ourselves a lot cheaper than the GDSs want to charge us,” he said.
“GDSs talk about cutting costs, but they haven’t cut costs to anywhere near the levels that others, such as business travel agents, have done.
“I remember a recent presentation when one GDS talked about only having raised fares by a few percent and I thought ‘what planet are you on, putting up charges in this market?”
Jones claimed that senior company executives wanted service and didn’t have the time to book their own travel itineraries.
But fellow speaker Tom Stone, chairman of the Institute of Travel Management, described this view as “frightening”.
“I strongly disagree with that and there is a huge increase in the use of self-booking tools,” said Stone.
“Look at the example of ATMs. When they first came out we didn’t trust getting cash out of the wall and wanted to go into the banks for our money, now nobody does that.
“If you take the view that senior managers won’t use self-booking tools then you might as well go back to the dark ages.”
Report by Jeremy Skidmore from the GBTA Conference, Shanghai
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