NEWS TRAVEL WEEKLY BUSINESS CONTINUED FROM THE BACK
travel sites. Not only would the implementation of burdensome regulations on OTAs prove harmful to the consumer, it could have a negative impact on B&Bs. “OTAs save consumers money
and offer them more choice. They put heads in beds and help B&Bs market unsold inventory. They deliver customers through the front doors of hotels and B&Bs unlike any other channel.” Ettsa represents OTAs including
Booking.com, Expedia and
Hotels.com in Europe. The TTA represents many of the same firms in the US, including Expedia and
Booking.com parent Priceline. The B&B Association has
lodged five complaints against
Booking.com and one each against Expedia and
Hotels.com. Documents sent to the CMA allege: “OTAs, especially the Priceline group and the Expedia group, force hotels and B&Bs . . . to charge the commission-inclusive price to guests even where the property sells direct to the guest from its own website and no OTA commission is payable.” It argues: “[These] anti- competitive clauses prevent hotels and B&Bs charging the net-of-commission price to direct customers and result in the consumer paying more.” The association points
out OTA commissions are typically 15%-18%, “but can be considerably higher”. It also points out rate-parity clauses have been banned in France and Germany and demands “they be banned in the UK”. A second complaint argues:
“OTAs deceive consumers with false discounts . . . illegal under UK law. These appear to show that the room shown, for the night shown, has been discounted by the OTA [when] in fact, the OTA has no discount for that night.” The competition authority has yet to respond to the complaints.
Norwegian praises agents for selling ‘value long-haul’
Ian Taylor
ian.taylor@travelweekly.co.uk
Norwegian has set a benchmark for “value long-haul” flights and done it with the help of UK agents, according to its head of UK and Ireland sales.
Dominic Tucker said: “Value long-haul has been a novelty in the past and not quite gained the traction to compete with the legacy airlines. We’re less than four years old, [but] we’ve set the benchmark.” Tucker will address The
Travel Convention in the Azores in October. It’s not something a low-cost carrier’s head of sales has done previously, but he said Norwegian depends on agents for a significant proportion of sales on certain routes. He said: “The trade is very important to us. About 35% of our UK bookings to Las Vegas are through agents, and we expect [our flights] to Denver and Buenos Aires to have good trade sales. “We have about 100 UK and
‘Brexit is not major concern but an air agreement is vital’
Brexit does not rate as a major concern for Norwegian although “we need an agreement in place”, said UK and Ireland head of sales Dominic Tucker. He said: “The UK is a key market, but it’s not our main breadwinner. A lot of our routes don’t even touch the UK. The challenges for airlines taking the majority of revenue in sterling are greater. “But we do need an air services agreement [between the EU and
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BOEING 787: ‘New aircraft cost less and we can fly into secondary airports’
Ireland agents with net fares agreements, ranging from big consolidators to niche specialists. We have full content agreements with the GDSs. We have a good agent product – for example, agents can do name changes easily. “About 1,000 UK agents have
taken our Online Travel Training course in the last six months and a similar number [took it] last year. “We’ve worked hard to get the message across that working with Norwegian is simple. “We don’t want agents to have a
UK] to make sure planes can fly between countries. There is a legal requirement to get an agreement.” For now, he said the UK market appears unaffected: “We’re seeing people wait a lot later [to book], but demand still seems to be there.” Norwegian began double-daily
flights to New York from Gatwick this week, operating every day except Wednesday. It also flies daily to Los Angeles and plans to increase frequencies on other long-haul routes from Gatwick. The carrier will commence
flights to Denver in September and
to Buenos Aires in February 2018. › Tucker will talk about the challenges and opportunities
reason not to book with us.” As a consequence, Tucker said: “The legacy carrier alliances are looking a lot more closely at what we do and trying to emulate it, [although] they can’t match it. The legacy airlines are very profitable, but we have a fairly good cost model. It’s hard to emulate us.” Norwegian flies only the latest
Boeing 787 Dreamliner on long- haul routes from Gatwick. Tucker said: “New aircraft cost less and we can fly into secondary airports. It adds up to lower unit costs.”
TUCKER: ‘There is a legal requirement to get agreement’
facing Norwegian in a session called ‘Designing the Future’ on October 10 at The Travel Convention in the Azores.
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