Mark Pestronk
Q: My agency's standard corporate-account contract is six pages long, and its length has been a deterrent to closing a sale to corporate accounts. They have to run it by their lawyers, who are always busy, and sometimes we never hear from them again. If I were to reduce the contract to its bare essentials, could I cut it down to about two pages, including our fee list, without sacrificing our rights or the account's responsibilities?
A: You could probably whittle it down to two pages plus your fee list. Based on my experience with what can go wrong or create controversy in corporate-travel management, I would advise that you provide the following as the bare essentials:
First, the account must pay for airline and railroad tickets using a credit card system. Any card will do, and cardless systems (known as ghost cards) are fine, too.
Although a small percentage of corporate accounts pay by check, you bear a risk of nonpayment each time you agree to such an arrangement, so almost all agencies refuse to agree to them. You must pay ARC every Friday regardless of whether or when the account pays you.
Second, because the airlines reserve the right to send you a debit memo for credit card chargebacks whenever there is no card imprint or original signature on a credit-card charge form, you need to require the account to indemnify you against such debit memos. The airlines claim this right even if you hold the account's power of attorney, even if there are no actual cards and no one uses an imprinter anymore.
Third, the account's duty to reimburse should also be extended to debit memos for reservation-rule violations such as back-to-backs and hidden cities. In most cases, your agent has no idea that the itinerary requested by the traveler violates the rules.
Fourth, the account should commit to use your agency exclusively for the term of the contract and to refrain from making any bookings directly with suppliers. Although this commitment is probably more honored in the breach than in the observance, it still focuses the account's attention on the need to channel at least most bookings through you.
Fifth, you should disclaim liability for anything that goes wrong on a trip that is not your fault, such as delays, cancellations and other supplier acts or omissions including defaults. You should include other events beyond your control, such as GDS errors and currency fluctuations.
Sixth, the term and termination provisions need to protect you. Ideally, there should be no way for the account to terminate without cause until the end of the term, and there should be automatic renewal.
Seventh, to avoid the most common source of controversy, you need to specify all of your transaction fees and to define any terms that may not be known to a layman. If you use the word "transaction" you need to cover what and it includes and what it doesn't.
If your agency offers the Concur online booking system under a contract with either Concur or your consortium or franchise, you may also be required to include verbiage that protects Concur's confidential information and intellectual property. As far as I know, no other online booking-system vendor requires such clauses.