THE BUSINESS TRAVEL MAGAZINE I 39 The Review ➔ Time for pay back!
GETTING airlines to cough up compensation for denied boarding or delayed or cancelled flights can be stressful, difficult, time- consuming and often impossible. The common response to a
claim is the excuse that the aircraft suffered a technical fault due to extraordinary circumstances – which is a perfectly legal defence under EU law. And with little or no information
to go on, a passenger has no way of disputing the airline's assertion that the fault was unforeseen, serious enough to put the aircraft out of action or, indeed, whether there had in fact been any sort of technical fault at all. Well, that's not quite true. The passenger can turn to EUclaim, a Netherlands-based company that has made it its mission to hold airlines to account. With an impressive data- gathering facility and a willingness to go to law, EUclaim has helped about 34,000 passengers make successful claims against airlines over the last four years, albeit predominantly leisure travellers in the Netherlands. Now the company is pushing its service into the UK, Germany and the US while also developing options that would suit SME or corporate customers. "We can apply the consumer solutions on a larger scale for business," says EUclaim UK director and group chief counsel, Mike Rattenbury. "What we are discussing is creating a portal for companies where employees can log in if they are waiting at an airport or hotel for a delayed or cancelled
THE TECHNOLOGY IN BRIEF
flight, supply details which we will then process and use to claim compensation on behalf of the company." Rattenbury is talking to two
“EUclaim holds a database that tracks every flight into and out of every Category One, Two and Three airport through- out Europe”
possible corporate clients he describes as household names with heavy air travel requirements, from short-haul through to long- haul itineraries. With EU law requiring airlines to
pay a sliding scale of compensa- tion depending on the length of journey and delay period, passengers held up for more than three hours on routes of more than 3,500km, for example, are entitled to recover 600 euros. EUclaim calculates there is around 130 million euros to be claimed in compensation every
• THE vast majority of travel buyers have no direct input into the mobile tools used by travellers, and those with indirect engagement are in the minority. That was the conclusion of recent Institute of Travel & Meetings (ITM) research into the use of mobile technology in the business travel industry. Two-thirds of buyers said their travellers are spending more time away from the office than three years ago, and that the use of mobile services used by travellers is relatively high. Sixty-one per cent of respondents said their company encouraged the use of and provided or planned to provide laptop video conference facilities; 37 per cent said they planned to provide travellers with mobile self-booking tools, with 27 per cent saying they already do; and 77 per cent of buyers said that their company policies only allowed for the use of technology and applications approved by the company.
year – a figure that seems to remain constant, with about 1.5 per cent of all flights across Europe affected by
long delay or cancellation each and every year. The compensation regulations
apply to all intra-Community flights, flights into the Community on a European carrier and flights out of the Community on any airline. EUclaim holds a database that tracks every flight into and out of every Category One, Two and Three airport throughout Europe and has access to a raft of other sources that allow close analysis of aircraft disposition. SMEs might want to take
advantage of EUclaim's online service that offers basic information costing £14.90 and fight the claim themselves; upgrade to an expanded Flight Observational Report costing from about £80 that gives expert analysis; or go for the no-win-no- fee service where EUclaim retains 27 per cent of any compensation rewarded to the claimant. The corporates in discussion
with EUclaim are looking at automated bespoke schemes and seem interested in using any money recovered from airlines to fund carbon offset. UK-based readers interested in the scheme can log on
www.euclaim.co.uk; for the US it is
www.euclaim.com.
• EGENCIA, the corporate travel arm of Expedia, has launched an iPhone applications for business travellers. Features include flight and destination alerts, 'smart' itinerary details, flight schedules, online check-in and a click-to-call facility. The Smart Itinerary delivers relevant information during the appropriate part of the user's journey by detecting their location. For example, flight information is delivered while the traveller is on their way to the airport, and hotel information by the time they land. Flight alerts inform travellers about delays and cancellations that may affect their trip, and destination alerts cover natural disasters, security issues and the like. The app, designed specifically for Egencia clients, can be downloaded through Apple's App Store. The app will be released for BlackBerry, Android and other smartphone users in the near future.
• INTERCONTINENTAL Hotels claims to be the first hotel company to launch an app for Windows- based smartphones. Its Priority Club Rewards app allows users to find and book hotel rooms, check rates and view or cancel bookings across seven IHG brands, namely InterContinental, Hotel Indigo, Crowne Plaza, Holiday Inn, Holiday Inn Express, Staybridge Suites and Candlewood Suites. IHG's research shows that 65 per cent of its guests who book through a mobile device are doing so for stays within one day, while the company had already surpassed 2010 room night bookings from mobile devices in only the first five months of 2011.
52 I THE BUSINESS TRAVEL MAGAZINE
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