The Knowledge > Buyer perspective


Why can’t…. AIRLINES MAKE LIFE EASIER?


Travel buyer Keith Mullineux is frustrated by airlines’ unbundling strategies which necessitate too many costly calls to the TMC


Keith Mullineux EMEA TRAVEL MANAGER, GENERAL ELECTRIC (GE) Keith is targeted with driving down the cost of travel for 30,000 travellers employed across the seven separate GE businesses in 20 European countries. Over the last eight years in this role, Keith has focused on leveraging and negotiating supplier deals, using data to obtain full value from their travel spend, standardising travel processes around an SBT, and consolidating all European operations into a single centre. Keith’s career has embraced sourcing, sales and project management.


PROBABLY the key task that I am measured against is that of taking cost out of the booking process. In Europe we have 30,000 travellers arranging around 135,000 trips for themselves every year, so when we shave little more than £1 off our average handling costs, an impressive $250,000 goes straight to the bottom line. The secret to making this all happen is transferring transactions away from the telephone and onto our self-booking tool (SBT) since it is five times more expensive to handle a reservation on the phone. And although we think that we are doing pretty well with 80 per cent of all our trips now booked on-line, it is proving very difficult to push this up further. Sadly it is the carriers who, perhaps unwittingly, are often frustrating our efforts. Even in today’s global economy, airlines still tend to make pricing decisions on what they believe the local market will bear and distribute their airfares selectively by country of Point of Sale (POS). It can generally be assumed that the lowest fares will be found on sale in the country where a particular trip begins. Our SBT therefore automatically takes the traveller into the database of his/her ‘home’ country on the assumption that this is where both their trip originates and where the lowest market fares will be found. That's fine until the traveller decides to start a trip outside their ‘home’ country. This confusion is well illustrated by


“We still have airlines that do not accept Amex cards which we issue to our travellers as their form of payment”


departures from Basle, which is generally accepted to be in Switzerland with the code BSL. However the very same airport is known as Mulhouse which is in France (MLH) but is also EuroAirport (EAP) and furthermore claims to be the airport of Freiburg in


Germany. So when we have French travellers from Belfort flying, say, to Atlanta, and German travellers from


Freiburg travelling to Newark, for example, how can they be sure that although they are departing from Basle the SBT is truly presenting them with lowest fare of all those available POS, France, Germany or Switzerland? The answer of course is that they


can’t, so they have to pick up the phone and speak to an agent who is able to navigate through all this complexity. The problem is that while they are on the phone, the meter is running! We are also now seeing frustrating complexity arise from ‘unbundling’ practices by the airlines. SBTs can easily digest simple point to point reservations without the need for an agent's involvement, but increasingly travellers might find themselves having to organise the ‘free’ limo transfer, arrange for additional baggage, secure a special seat or even order a pillow and blanket. Faced with this mounting burden, the traveller is easily tempted to pick up the phone and seek the assistance of an agent. We have some employees who are residents of Tenerife or Sardinia and who are therefore eligible for a ‘local resident’ domestic airfare discount and, guess what, these things are not visible in the GDS, necessitating another call to our agents. Meanwhile frequent travellers in France buy themselves a ‘Carte d’Abbonnement’ to access domestic flight discounts, but these discounts cannot be computed by the SBT, once again resulting in a phone call. Even in this day and age we still


have some airlines that do not accept Amex cards which we issue to our travellers as their form of payment (FOP). This results in the transaction being declined and, of course, a subsequent phone call to try to resolve the issue. And what we are now also seeing


is airlines starting to add a condition to their lowest promotional fares: “FOP must NOT be credit card”. This is a trend which potentially could push our processes back to the Stone Age.


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 Hotel Booking Agents confused with the Hospital Broadcasting Association.


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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