Corporate clients rallied by the Business Travel Coalition are threatening to withdraw business from British Airways should new global distribution agreements result in booking surcharges. Forty-one buyers from such companies as McKesson, Oracle, Philips Electronics and PricewaterhouseCoopers plan to send a letter next week to British Airways CEO Willie Walsh, urging him to provide surcharge-free content through the GDS.
British Airways faces expiration of its distribution deals late this month, and BA executives on both sides of the Atlantic told
BTN that new GDS agreements could result in booking surcharges for corporate clients
(BTN, Feb. 5). A BA spokesperson earlier this week said deals with distributors had yet to be struck, but travel management professionals carefully are watching BA's renegotiations, which they see as the bellwether for changes to European corporate travel distribution.
"We are writing to express our profound concern about your airline's reported intentions to undermine our existing corporate travel procurement process by imposing new surcharges and withholding content from the global distribution systems and the travel management companies and corporations they serve," the letter to BA's Walsh states. If British Airways elects to withhold content and levy new charges, then signatories would shift business to other airlines "that build their distribution programs around our preferences," the letter states.
BTC, the U.K. and Ireland's Institute of Travel Management and U.K.'s Guild of Travel Management Companies have urged BA to keep customers in mind when coming to new GDS terms.
"Potentially this could be an additional distribution cost, which we as the customer will have to bear," said one of the signers of the letter, Nicky Spence, ITM board director and commercial manager of travel for Smith & Nephew, a manufacturer of medical devices. "It is already difficult manage corporate travel. This puts buyers and TMCs in a position where travelers could move back to booking on the Internet."
"If content is fragmented and travelers can't book through one medium, this could affect our whole program. We have responsibility to know where people are," said Alison Johnston-Ralph, global travel manager for Air Products, who also signed the letter. "The airlines should make sure that all content is accessible through the GDSs. I am worried this may be a ploy to persuade corporates to book direct through BA.com. We won't do that because we want our TMC to be able to capture all of our data."