Rome - Six business travel associations established a
European advocacy group and prioritized a half-dozen industry issues on which to
cooperate, including airline ticket transparency. The Pan-European Advocacy
Council will work to provide education and lobby government bodies, according
to Ron DiLeo, the outgoing executive director of the Association of Corporate
Travel Executives.
In addition to ACTE, the council includes the Belgian
Association of Travel Management, France's Association Francaise des Travel
Managers, the Dutch Cortas group, Spain's Asociación Espanola Gestores Viajes Empresa and
U.K.'s Guild of Travel Management Companies. Leaders from the six associations
met in June and again here last week to discuss content development and other
strategies.
"We brainstormed things we all thought were important
in B2B to be brought to the attention of legislatures or our association bodies,"
DiLeo said last week during a press briefing. "A number of these
organizations asked us if we would help support their lobbying efforts. To be
clear, ACTE does not do lobbying. It is not our core competency. A lot of
lobbying involves commercial issues and we don't take sides on commercial
issues.
"But that doesn't mean we can't raise these issues in
our education forums and give people a peripheral view," DiLeo continued.
"If you want lobbying activity, we have our partners at GTMC. We work in
conjunction with them."
At last week's meeting, the council discussed six topics,
with airline ticket transparency emerging as the top priority. "Recent
data presented to the European Commission by the Guild of European Business
Travel Agents found many inconsistencies across itineraries in terms of fares,
booking class and surcharges," according to the GTMC general manager John
Williams.
"The topics we're talking about sound obvious, but they
have a European view," DiLeo said. "If you're from the United States,
the first thing you think about is ancillary fees and services. But it's
different. In this market it's about the price of a ticket if you live in Paris
and need to buy a ticket in Italy versus the United Kingdom. You will have a
range of prices. Transparency here means a set of standards that no matter
where you buy the ticket it's the same price. It's the ability to fly from
Brussels to Paris to New York for less than it costs to fly from Paris to New
York, which is the oldest issue in the book. Can that be regulated? Should
there be standards with all that? Those are the questions being raised."
The five other issues prioritized by the council are:
• Computer reservation system/global distribution system
codes of conduct. "The issue on the table," according to DiLeo,
"is: Should non-GDSs be held to the same code as the GDSs" if they
are using information as a GDS would? "Sabre, Amadeus and Travelport live
by a certain code. But other organizations like the International Air Transport
Association and data aggregators, which are not GDSs, can do things with data that
GDSs can't," he explained. Despite data privacy laws, "the biggest issue
is buyers aren't the first ones or only ones to have access to their
information. Everybody has access to it before they sit down to negotiate."
• Passenger Protection 261. "In this market, European
flag carriers are subject to this rule" that offers passenger compensation
for denied boarding and extended delays," DiLeo said. "If you're not
a European flag carrier, you can be two hours late and not face the same
penalties. The objective here would be to have standards that apply to everyone."
• Mobile roaming and data fees "are not exactly a
travel issue, but a big travel and expense issue," DiLeo said. The council
is asking, "Should there be some sort of standard around the cost of data
on your mobile device? There needs to be [pricing] awareness. People just don't
know. Should there be regulations around it?"
• United Kingdom Air Passenger Duty/European Union Emissions
Trading System. "If you're from the United Kingdom and flying through
Europe, you pay all of it—APD and ETS," DiLeo said. "There are some
staggering statistics" on the cost of "green" taxes. "Should
there be a standard? The European marketplace is going to suffer as a result of
this" as passengers consider alternative routings, he added.
• European Union Value-Added Tax. "This is one of those
topics that you may, or may not want to get too much clarity on because it
could cost the industry a tremendous amount of money," DiLeo suggested.
"For example, for a TMC that charges a transaction fee, should the VAT be
charged only on that transaction fee or on the entire cost of the ticket? All
TMCs today charge it on the transaction fee, but it's kind of vague. Clarity on
this could wipe out TMC revenues."
DiLeo's tenure leading ACTE is scheduled to end in November
and he said he would recommend to his successor, Greeley Koch, that the council
meet quarterly.
"If we do this the right way, we think we can really
get the volume raised and make a difference," he said. "Maybe we
should tax this industry a little less and invest it in a little more." He
added that the Americas and Asia/Pacific regions could be next for similar
advocacy efforts
"We saw [Europe] as having a gap in that advocacy,"
DiLeo said. "The Asia market is a little more complicated."
In addition to DiLeo and GTMC's Williams, Pan-European
Advocacy Council representatives included Belgian Association of Travel
Management's Geert Behets, who also is UCB Pharma global travel and fleet
management director; Association Francaise des Travel Managers board member
Jerome Drevon-Barreaux, who serves as ACTE's country champion in France and AXA
group category travel and events manager; Cortas chairman Herman Mensink; Asociación Espanola
Gestores Viajes Empresa's Augusto Pardo; ACTE president Suzanne Neufang, who
also is president of GetThere and Sabre Virtual Meetings ; and ACTE Advocacy
Council member Kerin McKinnon, who works as Travel and Transport global and
strategic sales director.
DiLeo noted that another unnamed body that lobbies in Europe
on behalf of online travel agencies last week approached the council.
He added that there is an intent is to name an ACTE
representative to manage all the association's advocacy work.