he Justice Department's Antitrust
Division is charged with the very serious task of protecting U.S.
consumers from the depredations of monopolists and price-fixers.
This is heavy stuff. Serious stuff. And looking at the world
through the lens of the antitrust laws tends to be a sobering,
humorless experience.
Still, we couldn't suppress a chuckle when the guardians of
competition described Lufthansa's settlement offer in the Sarah
Hall class action as an illegal proposition because it "would
include an agreement among the competing travel agents that jointly
sets the commissions that each will charge to Lufthansa."
It evidently escaped the notice of our trustbusters that the
kinds of small and medium-size travel agents participating in this
lawsuit don't "charge" airlines a commission. If they did, it
wouldn't be zero and there wouldn't be a lawsuit. Small travel
agents take what they can get.
It strikes us as preposterous to characterize the proposed
settlement as an agreement among competing agents to "fix"
commissions.
Nevertheless, federal judges in antitrust suits tend to listen
when the Justice Department speaks, so it's safe to assume that the
Lufthansa proposal is in trouble, particularly because ARTA and
many agents have spoken out against it.
But we continue to believe that Lufthansa was on the right track
by attempting to put this lawsuit behind it with a constructive
proposal, a framework for a business relationship that would enable
agents and the airline to work together and move forward.
If the judge sends the parties back to the drawing board to
rework this proposal, we hope the parties can stay on that
track.
• • •
Managing meals
n our news pages today, you may
pause and ponder, as we did, an observation from the
number-crunchers at Runzheimer: Meals take a bigger bite out of
corporate travel budgets than rental cars.
Close to 70 cents out of the corporate travel dollar goes to
airlines and hotels, but in its latest survey of the corporate
travel landscape, Runzheimer found that 10% of the total goes for
meals, while car rentals account for 9%. And meal costs likely are
increasing for business travelers, as airlines cut back on inflight
meal service.
More than half of the 5,000 corporations surveyed by Runzheimer
have preferred-supplier agreements in place with travel vendors
such as car rental companies, but we suspect very few of them
involve local restaurants or national restaurant chains. That may
change.
As corporations continue to whittle their budgets, forcing their
travelers to fly and sleep on the cheap, we could be approaching
the day when road warriors will be expected to have breakfast at
IHOP for a negotiated discount on pancakes (there are, after all,
1,100 IHOPs) or lunch at Applebees (1,400).
Could happen.