THE KNOWLEDGE 2 buyer perspective
A call to arms... To DELIVEr AccUrATE DATA on AIrLInE's UnBUnDLInG FEEs
Travel buyer Judith Gledhill lets off steam about what is the bane of her life, unbundling airline fees, and asks who will take the responsibility for finding a solution
for last quarter’s air travel and there are a huge amount of entries which I can’t work out what they’re for.” I inwardly groan, as I know exactly what
A
they are referring to without having to make the call. Unbundling fees! Unbundling fees are fast becoming the bane
of every travel manager's life. What I don’t understand is why when airlines decided to make the change to unbundled fees, did they not check with their customers first as to whether we would prefer to have one upfront fare or it broken down into a plethora of extras that we now have to add back on. This essentially brings us back to the
same place we were at before they were unbundled, only now we have to guess when we receive our MI what all the ancillary costs are for. Transparency is great, but that indicates that it comes with a better understanding of where your money is going. It would seem, however, that this isn’t the case when it comes to unbundling fees as understanding is replaced with confusion and guesswork instead. With charges for checked baggage, speedy boarding, seat reservations, amend- ments, credit card fees, merchant fees etc, it is confusing for us as travel managers – let alone our internal customers – to fully understand the true cost of their unbundled flight ticket. I for one during my
Judith Gledhill Bouda
Judith has worked in the travel industry
for over 25 years, of which the last ten
have been spent as a travel buyer. Her
most recent role was travel manager at E.on where she worked for four
years before leaving to join Bouda, a
consultancy firm specialising in the optimisation of
travel programmes. While at E.on Judith implemented a new HBA, TMC and had an industry first deal with Premier Inn. She also drove online adoption up
from 18% to 86% and achieved saving in excess of £5million.
nother email arrives in my inbox. It reads: “Judith, please can you give me a call. I’ve been reviewing our latest lodge card statement
time as travel manager at E.on spent a lot of energy and effort encouraging the travel bookers and travellers to always book the lowest logical fare. However, what starts off as an attractive proposition when unbundled can work out to be less than attractive once it's been re-bundled. Budget holders and cost centre managers
need to understand exactly what they are spending each month on air travel. They also need to set realistic budgets for the following year but because of the quality of data from the airline to the TMC, and then on to the lodge card provider, this task becomes increasingly difficult and there is a lot of 'guesstimating' done. I don’t understand why the unbundled data
can’t be clearly labelled as to what each individual charge is for. Yes, it may be attached to a ticket number or have an employee number but it would be great to be able to pivot the data and know exactly what each cost centre or business unit has spent on baggage, credit cards or amendments. The management information we receive is
one of the most powerful tools in a travel manager's arsenal, but how can we advise our customers and stakeholders on behaviors and influence change without this information being concise and correct? Should the airline be ensuring that the data being passed on to the travel management company is being labelled correctly? Or is it the TMC’s responsibility to make sure that the data is cleansed and the appropriate information is attached to the raw data each month before it’s been forwarded to the travel manager? At a recent AirPlus customer forum they
announced that they had recently launched a solution in the US to help with the problems associated with airline unbundling costs. Hooray, but when will it be launched in the UK and other markets? In the meantime, the burning question on
my mind is who is taking ownership of this and what will be done to ensure that in the not too distant future travel managers’ frustrations around airline unbundling fees will be a thing of the past and we will receive clear, concise and correct data. Let's hope it's sooner rather than later.
THE 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 APIS
Association of Corporate Travel Executives average daily room rate
Advanced Passenger Information System ATOC Association of Train Operating Companies
BAPCO British Association of Professional Conference Organisers
BAR BTA BTC
best available rate business travel agent business travel centre
CDW collision damage waiver CRM CRO CRS CSR DDR ETES FFP GDS
hotel booking agent
customer relationship management central reservation office central reservation system corporate social responsibility daily delegate rate end-to-end solution
frequent flyer programme global distribution system
GTMC Guild of Travel Management Companies HBA
HBAA Hotel Bookings Agents Association IATA ITM KPI
LRA MI
MIA MPI
OTM PNR RFP ROI SBT SLA SME TEM TMC
management information Meetings Industry Association
Meetings Professionals International online travel management passenger name records request for proposal return on investment self-booking tools
service level agreement
small and/or medium-sized business/es travel and expense management travel management company
International Air Transport Association Institute of Travel & Meetings key performance indicators last room availability
10 THE BUSINESS TRAVEL MAGAZINE
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