Navigating Negotiated Fares Online

<B>Navigating Negotiated Fares Online</B>

One of the most complex areas of travel automation technology has been in the handling of private or negotiated corporate fares. Traditionally, after the negotiation, the corporate travel agency has been responsible for coding the discounts into the private fares system in the GDS on behalf of the corporate client. This approach has some inherent issues, especially as the volume and complexity of private fares increase. For instance, the discounts are coded and, in some cases, are loaded by a party that was not privy to the negotiation. Also, private fares loaded by the agency are not guaranteed by the GDS like normal published fares, since the GDS has no control over whether the fares are entered correctly by the agency.

1999 brought a significant change in the way airline carriers and corporate buyers implement negotiated discounts. A new capability was rolled out by the Airline Tariff Publishing Co., called Airline Private Fares. The objective was to help manage faring for nonpublished fares that are restricted to certain markets or customers, such as Internet fares and negotiated corporate discounted fares. Making this ATPCO product enhancement work requires implementation and software development in the GDS for agency and corporate subscribers--each GDS calls their implementation of this functionality something different. At Apollo for instance, this new functionality is called "Private Fares II," and it is fully functional and available to all subscribers now.

With the introduction of Airline Private Fares, the carrier enters the fares into the ATPCO system following the negotiation with corporations. These fares are directly accessible through the GDS, which helps ensure accuracy and timeliness of private fares.

Because this is a departure from the traditional method of agencies loading the fares, there has been some confusion over who is responsible for loading the fares. Today, many corporations and major domestic carriers are comfortable with the process of directly loading corporate discount fares into the ATPCO system--the issue is overcoming the confusion where the process is not understood.

ATPCO Airline Private Fares and the associated GDS products are an important step in faring automation, it should be noted that these are still not complete solutions. There is currently no automation anywhere in the world that completely automates all airline fares--in particular those fares negotiated between corporations and their suppliers. Some of the most esoteric contract types still cannot be accommodated.

The advent of Web-based booking systems has introduced several additional factors into the process of booking negotiated corporate fares. The biggest issue is that the end traveler now sees a price quotation delivered by the online tool. Online booking tools currently rely either on the GDS for agent-stored faring or access to ATPCO-stored fares. If there are inaccuracies in those products, then those inaccuracies will be shown to the user. In contrast, when a traveler calls an agent over the phone, that agent may catch an automation-generated pricing error and perform the manual pricing process before quoting the final fare to the traveler.

At GetThere, our goal is to be able to directly and internally price, book and ticket all fare types, without relying on such outside systems as the GDS to perform these functions for us. This will not only help to alleviate some of the remaining issues with online technology, but also enable other more significant advances that will help to lower the cost of travel distribution while improving the overall experience for corporations and their travelers.

Advice for travel managers: There are several things you can do to navigate these issues while you deploy your online booking system.


<LI> Focus on a plan that gets online booking technology deployed in your company as early as possible. The cost savings that you will see from each online transaction more than compensates for the attention dedicated to these issues. This is a key point that most people still fail to realize. Your current manual environment is not perfect, and the new online environment is not perfect. The only difference is that by taking your company online, you could be saving a substantial amount more money than you are now. Online booking does not cost you money, it saves you money.


<LI> Work with your supplier partners to implement discount programs that can be automated more easily. The airline will be more motivated to do this if it is responsible for encoding these fares and publishing them through ATPCO.


<LI> Work with your supplier partners to move to airline-stored rather than agency-stored fares. This solves several of the more important contract problems and puts the responsibility for correct contract entry with the entity that ultimately can accept liability for correctness. Airline-stored corporate fares published through ATPCO are guaranteed by the GDS like normal published fares are. Agency-stored fares are not. Most major domestic carriers now are able to enter your corporate contracts and publish them through ATPCO to your pseudo.


<LI> Understand that these issues are well known, and that many people have been here before you. The deficiencies in the automation are not bugs and not a result of a lack of awareness about the complexities of your situation. They are also not isolated to the booking engine itself but, in almost every case, exist in either the GDS or in the ATPCO faring model as well. This is the current state of the art in travel technology, and properly implemented will bring savings to your travel program and reduced workload to the agency environment.


<LI> Insist on full up-front disclosure of known issues by all participating parties during the online booking product bid process. An online booking vendor that claims "we don't have that problem," when talking about well-known industry issues is generally inexperienced or glossing over the issue.


<LI> Train your agents on which itineraries are most likely to have contract problems and make sure they have a concrete process for resolving those issues and efficiently moving bookings to tickets. Remember that the agents' role is to bridge the gap between automation and your travel program. Online itineraries simply have a different set of issues than traditional phone-based reservations.

<LI> Place wording on the site that details the types of discrepancies that travelers might see in the booking process. If they are aware of what to expect and they understand the overall savings potential of online booking, then they will help you bridge the gap.


<LI> Talk to your peers about how they are approaching these issues. Working with companies like yours that are further along in the process will bring confidence that online booking really works and help identify effective strategies for implementation.


<I>Dan Whaley is one of the two cofounders of GetThere Inc., based in Menlo Park, Calif.