WASHINGTON, D.C. — While the GDSs,
travel agencies and corporate travel managers have railed against Lufthansa
Group’s surcharge on GDS bookings, an airline executive said that travel buyers
aren’t powerless against it.
If customers don’t want to book
directly with Lufthansa, they can skirt the 16-euro surcharge (a fee that takes
effect in most markets on Sept. 1) by booking a Lufthansa flight with one of
its codeshare partners, noted Dave Hilfman, United Airlines’ senior vice
president of worldwide sales.
United, a fellow Star Alliance
member, is one of those partners.
Hilfman, who was a panelist at the
ASTA Global Convention’s general session here on Monday, said, “If you are coming to the conclusion you want to get
around those things, there are ways to do that, at least on codesharing, and
that’s pretty well known. I know we have very creative, smart people
out in the agency community that will do what they have to do in light of this
development.”
He also said that the surcharge
was a business decision made by a “great partner.”
“I can’t speak on behalf of
Lufthansa. Every company needs to make their own business decisions,” Hilfman
said. “They have great folks back in Frankfurt that make these decisions.
They’ve obviously come to the conclusion that they think it’s in their best
interest.”
Time will tell if the decision was
a good one for Lufthansa, Hilfman said.
“The market always tells you
whether you’ve made the right commercial decision or not,” he said.
During the session, Amadeus Chief
Marketing Officer Scott Alvis said the “global trend” is toward offering more
content in the agency channel, not less. Every month, the GDS company is
“adding more airlines, more ancillary content, more fare handling,” Alvis said.
Scott Alvis of Amadeus at the ASTA Global Convention. Photo Credit: Jamie Biesiada
“Lufthansa’s latest surcharging of
the channel is really nothing more than cost shifting,” he said. “In fact, it’s
destroying value. They seem to have forgotten that there is a lot more
complexity to travel.”
Alvis said the surcharge will
decrease agent efficiency while increasing cost. Because Lufthansa’s lowest
price won’t be in the GDSs, customers will get “limited choice and limited
transparency.”
“Unilateral actions like this have
not done well in our industry,” Alvis said. “Relationships are built on trust
and understanding, not unilateral actions.”