NEWS TRAVEL WEEKLY BUSINESS Brussels hearing: Iata and Ectaa chiefs discuss airfares ‘discrimination’. By Ian Taylor CONTINUED FROM THE BACK
purchase all sorts of products and services.” He said: “The good news is the CRSs support this new standard and travel agencies worldwide support it.” But Hours added: “Large
travel agents are a bit afraid of these changes because of the money they get from the CRSs.” However, De Blust told
MEPs: “What would you think if before entering your favourite supermarket you have to swipe your supermarket card and you only see the prices the supermarket would like to show you? This is what NDC is about.” He said: “NDC is a standard aimed at collecting a lot of customer data before showing the customer a fare on one airline. It poses problems on fare transparency and comparison [of prices].” De Blust said: “With the unbundling of airfares you end up having to pay for the ticket, pay for your luggage, pay for your seat. “Airlines call this ‘enhancing the consumer experience’. “We feel it is a jungle of fares,
taxes and fees.” Hours insisted: “NDC is a standard available for all airlines. Iata is not just a club for the benefit of large airlines. It is equitable between small and big airlines.” But De Blust said: “Of the 290 members of Iata only about 20 have the financial means to invest in NDC. It means a considerable investment.” MEPs heard testimony from
senior industry figures and a representative of the European Commission. French MEP Karima Delli,
who chairs the committee, said: “This is just the start. We’ll be talking at greater length about this.”
‘Airlines would like to make comparison more difficult’
Airlines “would love less transparency” on prices and aim to make fare comparison “more difficult” for consumers, the head of the European travel agents’ and tour operators’ association has told MEPs.
Ectaa secretary-general Michel de Blust told the Committee on Transport and Tourism of the European Parliament: “The GDSs were created by the airlines. “Because they were the airlines’ animals, GDSs were biased. The legislator said, ‘That is not so good’, and that is how regulation came about regarding display.” Subsequently, airlines decided
to divest themselves of the GDSs, De Blust said, adding: “Thirty years later they want to reinvent a GDS at the expense of distribution and of consumers. At the end of the day, travellers will pay.” He said: “The airlines would love to have less transparency and to
Iata chief calls for new aggregators to vie with GDSs
Airline association Iata has confirmed it wants agency distribution opened to new aggregators to compete with GDSs through its New Distribution Capability (NDC). Iata head of NDC engagement and adoption Olivier Hours told the European Parliament’s Committee on Transport and Tourism: “NDC is just a standard with the objective to get more competition. “We need new aggregators.
We can’t have several hundred airlines, several thousand travel
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travelweekly.co.uk 6 September 2018
ECTAA’S DE BLUST: ‘Airlines want to reinvent a GDS at the expense of distribution and of consumers’
make comparison more difficult. That is what the unbundling of fares is about and that is what the airlines’ policy on GDSs is about.” Responding to testimony from
airline association Iata, De Blust said: “Iata says the GDSs constitute a bottleneck. But then how could the Lufthansa Group add a distribution cost charge of €16 to its fares and it seems this didn’t affect Lufthansa sales – or, at least,
agencies and only three CRSs. We need new entrants. “Iata’s objective is to get a number of aggregators to enter the market who are able to compete with the legacy CRSs.” Hours added: “The CRSs [GDSs]
are way too expensive today and to get distribution freedom airlines have to double their costs to roughly €10 per flight segment per passenger, which is outrageous. There is no way for an airline to get distribution freedom [without] breaking full content [agreements].” Hours told MEPs: “We’ve had support for this, for example from American Express Global Business Travel. The problem is the CRSs.” He also insisted: “Airlines
it didn’t affect Lufthansa sales in those markets in which Lufthansa Group is dominant?” Lufthansa imposed a €16 fee on GDS bookings in September 2015. British Airways and Iberia followed suit with GDS charges last November, and Air France-KLM added GDS booking charges in April. Ectaa represents Abta and other
European travel trade associations in Brussels.
IATA’S HOURS: ‘We need new aggregators to enter the market’
depend to a great extent on travel agencies and the big travel management companies. It is essential for them they adopt NDC.”
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