European LCC EasyJet To Accept AirPlus Payment

European low-cost carrier EasyJet this week will start to accept the AirPlus ghost card for payment as part of its concerted strategy to win more corporate business.

Travelers will be able to book on the airline's Web site directly or agents can book using the card on their behalf. In either case, when the booker selects the AirPlus option, a window pops up on the page that enables them to enter such additional information as departmental or project codes.

"It will enable the bookers at point of payment to capture all the data their corporate systems require for automated reconciliation with the back-end process," said Spencer Hanlon, managing director of AirPlus International. "The challenge for corporates buying low-cost carriers is that costs are added at the back end because the purchasing process is so basic. We have managed to eliminate that back-end cost. For a travel manager, it means they can analyze EasyJet to the same degree as a full-frills carrier."

EasyJet launched in the United Kingdom in 1995. It carried 32 million passengers in the 12 months ending on June 30 and has quickly become a pan-European operation, offering 235 routes between 67 different airports across the continent.

"AirPlus is one of the most common forms of payment in some parts of Europe, especially Germany, so if we want to be making headway there, we need to offer it," said an EasyJet source.

EasyJet also has become much more corporate-friendly since the beginning of the decade, when it ran advertisements baiting travel managers for allowing travelers to fly on "fat cat" mainstream airlines. It subsequently has realized that part of the reason travel managers shy away from budget carriers is the process complications that are caused by, for example, not distributing through a global distribution system.

The AirPlus deal is the latest example of EasyJet's attempts to rectify such problems. Sources have said the airline also is talking to self-booking tool providers about how it can distribute in a more sophisticated way than the currently problematic screen-scraping technique.

EasyJet also has worked to improve its appeal to business travelers as well as their employers. Recent innovations include allowing passengers to switch to an earlier flight for free if their meeting ends early, Internet checkin and offering lounge access and priority boarding for a fee.

AirPlus can be used on the Web sites of several low-cost carriers based in Germany and Switzerland, such as Hapag-Lloyd Express, Germanwings and Baboo. It is even available on Ryanair, an airline notorious for its strident rejection of frills of any kind.

"Our volumes with low-cost carriers, while significant, are never massive because they only have a small share of the corporate market," said Hanlon. "However, it is the ability to obtain universal data coverage which is of most interest to travel managers."