Facing an angry uproar from agents, warnings from travel lawyers and threats of lawsuits by agent groups, Travelport did a sudden about-face on its new Agility fees in the waning hours of 2011.
Less than 48 hours before the fees associated with Travelport's Agility Suite were set to kick in on Jan. 1, subscribers learned that the fee would be waived for many of them, at least temporarily.
While Travelport last week declined to say anything about the policy shift beyond a two-sentence statement, it appears the move means that the GDS provider will dodge a series of potential lawsuits.
Days after Travelport informed agents of the change in the program, ASTA issued a statement advising that it had been poised to sue Travelport if the GDS company did not waive the fees associated with the Agility Suite.
The Society wrote: "Many of ASTA's members wanted ASTA to initiate legal action against Travelport, and while ASTA was prepared to do that, it appears to be unnecessary as the rescission action respects agents' rights in their existing contracts while giving them the opportunity, if interested, to get potential added value from new features contained in Agility. When those contracts expire, the question of whether and how Agility will apply will be a matter of commercial negotiation between Travelport and its subscribers."
Travelport has been mum about its official reason for the about-face. None of the GDS's executives would agree to speak with a reporter about the matter last week.
While declining to explain the basis of its decision, Travelport did release the following brief statement: "Based on customer feedback, we have made limited changes to the Americas' Agility package which remains in place, and we are discussing these confidential, commercial details privately with our customers in the Americas."
On Dec. 30, Travelport sent its agent clients in North America a letter saying it would waive the fees for all but two programs that are part of its Agility suite until the expiration of the agents' current GDS contracts.
Derek Sharp, Travelport's president of the Americas region, said in the letter that the Smartpoint and Worldspan Go Translator Applications would be taken out of the Agility bundle and that agencies could "elect to purchase these products separately based on your business needs."
The letter went on to say: "The other products previously announced as part of Agility, including Travelport Rooms and More, will remain in the bundle, but Travelport will waive the Agility fee for your agency for the duration of the term of your existing Travelport subscriber contract."
As Travelport's statement indicated, the concession was made to North American subscribers; the Agility suite fees will still take hold in other countries.
The controversial program was unveiled early last month, when subscribers to Travelport's GDSs -- Apollo, Galileo and Worldspan -- learned that as of Jan. 1, they would be paying a monthly fee for the Agility program, which would include several functions that had previously been free, such as queues, as well as the two new ones, Smartpoint and Worldspan Go Translator.
Travelport said then that Agility would cost between $15 and $35 per user, per month, depending on where in the world the user was based. (Users are defined by global terminal identifiers, which typically reference a single agent but can also be shared.).
The program immediately met resistance, with both ARTA and ASTA arguing that Travelport was charging for services that had previously been free, a violation of the contracts it had with agencies.
Travel industry lawyers and those groups both asserted that while those contracts included a clause articulating Travelport's right to offer "optional" software, products, features, services and content for an additional fee, many of the features in the Agility suite were in fact essential to the functionality of the GDS.
'What Amadeus can offer'
In addition to threats of lawsuits, Travelport was likely concerned about agency defections.
As soon as the GDS announced the Agility program in early December, its competitors seized on the discontent it caused, with many Travelport customers receiving email from Amadeus offering information on "what Amadeus can offer you."
An Amadeus official said that in recent weeks, Amadeus had seen "an increase in inquiries and interest from agencies, including Travelport subscribers who are assessing their GDS options."
The official added: "We have been pleased to welcome many new agency customers to Amadeus. And according to agents that wished to remain anonymous, some had decided to convert to other GDS providers because of the Agility program."
Pressure from agency groups
According to industry insiders, large travel agency groups put a lot of pressure on Travelport to drop the fees.
"Nexion and our agents welcome the decision by Travelport to waive all charges for the Agility bundle for the term of our current contract," Nexion President Jackie Friedman wrote in an email. "In addition to our outreach to Travelport, we also salute the leaders of our sister companies -- Travel Leaders Corporate and Travel Leaders Franchise Group -- who made strong, convincing cases to them as members of Travelport's Advisory Board."
Bruce Bishins, managing director of ARTA, the group that made the first public objections to the legality of the Agility fees, said last week that despite the turnaround, the incident would hurt Travelport in the long term.
"What's more important is how they can be trusted ever again," Bishins said. "What a blunder!"
As to whether Travelport will implement the program's fees when each agency's contract expires is still to be determined. Given that Travelport contracts generally cover a period of three years or more, having agencies on such unequal terms for so long bothered some subscribers whose contracts were due to expire in the next few months.
Follow Johanna Jainchill on Twitter @jjainchilltw.