Op-Ed: Discontent With Content Talks, Exec Calls For CEO Summit

As a travel management company, our job is easy. All we have to do is provide our customers the very best product at the very lowest price and then provide outstanding customer service. Piece of cake!

Our only problem is that our suppliers cannot decide among themselves on the rules that we must all play by. Unfortunately, they rarely seem to consider what is best for our mutual customers.

In the end, it is the decisions that they make that have huge impacts on the agencies and their customers. The what-if scenarios everyone has to evaluate based on the many decisions that suppliers or global distribution systems "might" make are endless and require huge amounts of planning and preparing that ultimately drive lots of time and money to be spent by those who might be affected.

To make it more complicated, suppliers, who agencies represent, are trying to figure out ways to take more and more business direct. As well, the GDS companies, who have typically had deep pockets, are buying up more and more channels in order to try to control their own destiny and for leveraging purposes with the suppliers. The end result is that they now compete directly with the agencies that represent them as well.

Now, we seem to be going through these two- to three-year cycles, where the GDS companies and the suppliers (primarily the airlines) spend huge amounts of time and money posturing and positioning and, in the end, trying to agree on what the future "playing rules" and economics will be for everyone. The decisions they make are not just for themselves but also directly effect their customers…I mean competitors…I mean customers.

We all witnessed the fight that had airfare content available all over the place until the DCA and Preferred Fares agreements were reached. During that two-year span, TMCs spent huge amounts of time and money to try to help their customers pull it all together for the benefit of their travel programs while the suppliers and GDSs "worked it out." One thing I can tell you for sure, during this time period, the ultimate customer was not happy with either the suppliers or the GDSs, but in the end, agreements were reached, the rules were established and we got back to a more reasonable content environment.

And so, here we are again, watching the fight, the positioning, the posturing, that in the end will have a dramatic effect on how we all do business. Here we go again with ridiculous amounts of time being spent having closed-door discussions with airlines, agencies, GDSs, GNEs and others. The TMCs spend a lot of time then explaining to their customers what all of this "might" lead to. It is a crazy way for all of us to do business. Doesn't there have to be a better, more efficient way to solving these problems?

I'm not naïve enough to think that we can all join arms and sing "Kum Bai Ya" or that we can ignore the fact that everyone involved has to be careful with antitrust issues that can come about when parties talk, but I also believe there has to be a better way. A way that all the parties—suppliers, agencies, GDSs and corporate customers—can come together and try to solve these issues together. In the end, it is the corporate customer that has ended up footing most of the bill for the changes that are made, but they rarely get a direct voice in the decisions that are made.

I have seen panel discussion after discussion about this topic and appreciate that everyone wants to be "on stage" and voice an opinion, but I really don't think this is getting us anywhere. I also realize, because my company is party to many of them, that there are a lot of behind-the-scenes conversations between all the parties, mostly done on a one-on-one basis. Again, this gives all of us bits and pieces of the issues and the possible solutions, but it doesn't solve the problem.

I'm not sure I know the ultimate answer here. I do know that I, and many others I talk to, want to resolve these issues in a better, more efficient way, with all parties as part of the process. Maybe it should be a CEO summit: all the parties in one place at one time trying to talk through the issues. I don't know that the absolute decisions could be made there, but everyone who chose to could be party to the conversation and hear the same things from everyone involved.

While this might not be the ultimate answer, I still believe it would be a step in the right direction.

Bill Tech is president and CEO of Omaha, Neb.-based travel management company Travel and Transport.