Chris Kroeger
Sabre Travel Network North America senior vice president Chris Kroeger briefed Management.travelthis month on the company's new Efficient Access Solution that offers global distribution system users access to full content of airline participants and protection against additional service fees for GDS bookings that airlines may levy in the future--in exchange for "certain financial terms." An excerpt from the interview follows; news coverage appears here.
Is there a formal amount agencies must give up in terms of an incentive?
We're not going to talk specifically about the financial terms as it relates to the individual customers. That's par our usual course in terms of financial terms with agencies or suppliers. Each customer will know exactly what those financial terms are. It's a little different than some of our competitors in the past who have announced intentions of programs and have not revealed details. We are going to be revealing specific details about the structure of the program, how it works, the benefits, et cetera. We'll be talking about that with everybody, and then very specific to the financial term elements, we'll be having absolute clarity with each customer on what those are.
Can you give a ballpark percentage reduction?
Nope. Not going to be able to do that ... one of the things we have talked about considerably over the last few months is we think there's a role for incentives in the marketplace and have talked about financial terms that we'll be discussing with agencies. There will continue to be incentives in the marketplace as part of this program.
Does this announcement supersede all previous announcements from this year saying all clients would have full access to the carriers in question?
When we announced those deals, we described them as providing full content. There was nothing related to service fees. We have been forthright, I think, that model changes were likely to come. We have focused hard on making sure that change was a balanced change. We have made it clear that there would need to be a balance or give and take on what the new models will look like going forward. That's what this is. Agencies get full content and the benefits airlines are providing in exchange for certain financial terms.
Say an agency needs full content for certain carriers, but not all of them. Is there an in-between, or a grey area?
No, there is not. There is a collection of carriers in the program and an agency chooses to participate across the program. There is a variety of reasons, including simplicity. Those that do participate are assured access to that full content and protection from service charges. Those that don't no longer have those assurances.
Another point seems to be that negotiated rates are part of this structure, which was not the case with the previous airline GDS participation agreements. What's the significance of that?
When we talk about negotiated rates, it's about having access on non-discriminatory terms. So, it's not our position to be able to say that an airline must give a negotiated rate to any agency. That's a commercial relationship between them. But for us, it was important to ensure there was protection so that once that negotiated rate was agreed to, there's no discrimination as to how that agency or corporation could access that rate. So an airline couldn't tie a negotiated rate to a certain channel or GDS. It was important because we learned that that was an increasingly important element of the agency-supplier relationship.