It is hard to look at the recent ado over ancillary airline
fees without being reminded of efforts a few years ago to make transparent all
hotel charges.
While some business travel buyers saw in the possibility of
being able to break out all hotel folio fees an opportunity to make expense
reporting paperless, and others saw an opportunity to prevent their travelers
from charging the company for movies and minibar items, and a few hotel chains
even embraced the concept, most still have not. After all, the lack of
transparency for charges for services above and beyond the cost of a hotel room
or an airline ticket provides an advantage to the supplier. The harder it is
for business travel buyers to identify individual charges, the harder it is for
them to make and enforce policies to deter travelers from incurring them.
Clearly, as recent reports have shown, such charges amount to a whole lot of
revenue coming to suppliers, and the longer it takes to make them transparent,
the more the suppliers can pocket.
Increased scrutiny of ancillary airline fees has prompted
industry efforts to develop reporting standards, yet many have questioned why
the airlines recently saw it necessary to form their own group to advance such
standards in light of existing efforts.
Still, it's not difficult to understand why the airlines
would want to play a lead role in making a change that would shape their
business practices.
Meanwhile, as you have undoubtedly noticed, we at BTN have been making quite a few changes
ourselves lately.
With the change in ownership of BTN from Nielsen to Northstar Travel Media has come an infusion of
resources that have empowered us to change our free e-mail newsletter from weekly
to daily, our website from the old BTNonline.com
to the new businesstravelnews.com and
our print publication from the newspaper style that previously appeared beneath
our BTN logo to the magazine format
of the new Business Travel News.
While our frequency and formats have changed, we remain
committed to providing you with the corporate travel intelligence you need to
make smart business travel management decisions. As ever, we will continue to
provide you with the breaking news, exclusive interviews, analysis and research
that are critical for buyers to understand the seemingly always-accelerating
shifts in the business travel landscape. We also remain dedicated to
recognizing industry influence and innovation and to adding value and context
to the stories that are most important for you to do your job.
We see the new look of our print publication as more
reader-friendly and visually accessible. We certainly hope that you agree.
Please e-mail me at dmeyer@btnonline.com and let me know
what you think about our recent changes and how BTN can serve you even more effectively in the days, months and
years to come.
This story originally
appeared in the August 9, 2010, edition of Business Travel News.