The Knowledge > Buyer perspective
A call to arms... ON AIR PASSENGER DUTY
Incoming ITM UK & Ireland chair Nicola Lomas is calling for more vociferous lobbying from buyers against this unfair tax
Nicola Lomas DIRECTOR, CORPORATE TRAVEL SERVICES, STRATEGIC ALLIANCE SERVICES, INTERNATIONAL, OMNICOM GROUP
Nicola is responsible for supplier selection, and contract negotiation and management across EMEA and APAC at Omnicom, a global advertising and marketing communications services company. Her career has been almost exclusively in the travel industry, working for American Express and American Airlines, amongst others. She returned to the UK after almost two decades in Texas, and now calls London home. Nicola will take over as ITM Chair from Jamie Hindhaugh at the annual ITM Conference in May.
AS a Brit who repatriated over three years ago, I’m often impressed at the British attitude towards taxes: almost everyone recognises the need to tax, and as long as it’s fair, they quietly pay their share. But in the current economic climate and with the Chancellor's autumn budget statement fresh in our minds, I think we should all be thinking long and hard about taxes and what they are used for. One matter in particular that has
had me scratching my head for the past few years is how unsuccessful we’ve been at getting our voice heard on the topic of Air Passenger Duty. Using 'fair' as a measure, this one can be considered wholly unfair. APD has a deep reaching effect on
those who travel and those whose businesses depend on travel, and I was really pleased to finally see senior business leaders from British Airways, Virgin, easyJet and Ryanair speak out with one voice. Astonishingly, it seems as though
this allied communication fell on deaf ears as it was confirmed we should expect double inflation increases of APD, which is already higher than other European nations. As a buyer group, we should be raising our voices and ensuring the interests of our companies are heard. There are some great organisations within our industry that have various levels of political activity. Here in the UK the GTMC has a lobbying arm which serves its membership well; ACTE recently partnered with GTMC to jointly address
“Air Passenger Duty has a deep reaching effect on both those who travel and those whose businesses depend on travel“
issues impacting corporate travellers, but remains largely focused on education rather than lobbying; and GBTA has created a pan-European group representing the interests of buyers of travel on issues within the European Commission. This leaves the ITM, the
professional body for buyers of business travel and meetings in the UK and Ireland, to lead the focus on
industry affairs. I suppose I could be a bit biased as I will soon assume the responsibilities of ITM Chair but, even if I wasn’t, this topic is relevant to me and should be to you too. I’ve spent quite a bit of time discussing the issues with Mark Cuschieri who heads up the ITM’s Industry Affairs Group, and we both agree that unless buyers get involved and are vociferous with our views, we are letting ourselves and our companies down. Some newly published research shows the results of a recent survey conducted to measure the changing views of buyers. In 2009, 71 per cent of buyers surveyed by ITM said they thought APD was a fair tax based on the low rate and the promise from the Chancellor that the funds would be invested in cleaner aviation. While most people would agree that a certain level of taxation is needed, a huge percentage of buyers now believe that APD is unfair, too high, and not contributing to the causes it was sold on. With the Emissions Trading Scheme also coming into play, businesses could end up paying multiple times for the impact of their travel on the environment. The Office of Budget Responsibility (OBR) says the government hopes to recoup about £2.6billion from the tax in 2011/12 – up from £2.2 billion in 2010/11 – and up to £2.8billion in 2012/13. There will be further review on the bands used to calculate APD but, even so, the bottom line numbers remain staggering and place an unjust burden on air travel. I really hope that our collective voices will become louder and we can encourage our elected officials to do the fair and right thing for airline passengers, which in turn is the right thing for the British economy. Do I have a solution? No, but I am committed to being part of one, and as the next Chair of the ITM I'll be focused on finding better ways to pull buyers and suppliers together to present the whole picture to our government representatives and policy makers.
JARGON BUSTER ➔ ACRONYMS: sadly you just can't get away
from them in the dynamic world of business travel. So to help you out we've listed some of the most commonly used ones below, just so you don't get your Global Distribution Systems confused with the Government Decontamination Service.
ACFO Association of Car Fleet Operators ACTE
ADR average daily room rate APIS ATOC
BAPCO
BAR best available rate BTA BTC
Association of Corporate Travel Executives
Advanced Passenger Information System Association of Train Operating Companies
British Association of Professional Conference Organisers
business travel agent business travel centre
CDW collision damage waiver CRM CRO CRS CSR
DDR daily delegate rate ETES end-to-end solution FFP
customer relationship management central reservation office central reservation system corporate social responsibility
frequent flyer programme
GDS global distribution system GTMC
HBA hotel booking agent HBAA IATA ITM KPI LRA MI
Guild of Travel Management Companies
Hotel Bookings Agents Association International Air Transport Association Institute of Travel & Meetings key performance indicators last room availability
management information
MIA Meetings Industry Association MPI
OTM online travel management PNR passenger name records RFP ROI SBT SLA
request for proposal return on investment self-booking tools
service level agreement
SME small and/or medium-sized business/es TEM travel and expense management TMC travel management company
Meetings Professionals International
8 I THE BUSINESS TRAVEL MAGAZINE
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