WASHINGTON -- The Airlines Reporting Corp. said it secured
written commitments from the four major computer reservations
systems to keep confidential any data on service fees charged by
travel agents.
In separate agreements, the vendors pledged to release the data
only to ARC for reporting and billing purposes, not to airlines or
other parties. ASTA president Michael Spinelli applauded the move,
saying, "Service fee confidentiality is one of the great concerns
of travel agents in the post-commission-cuts marketplace."
ARC's announcement was intended to reassure the trade that
airlines will not be able to use CRSs to get service fee data on
agents who sign up for a new program that makes it significantly
more efficient to use ARC to process and collect fees. The optional
program, launched Dec. 29, enables agents to use an automated
document for their service fees and report them in their weekly
sales reports.
Since June 1995, shortly after the domestic airline commission
caps, ARC has offered a processing and collection system for
agents' service fees charged to clients' major credit cards. The
system requires agents to fill out a manual document for each
service fee and file a separate weekly fee report in addition to
the regular weekly sales report.
ARC has kept information on service fees confidential, including
the names of agencies that use the system and dollar amounts of
their charges. ARC even refuses to release industrywide statistics
on total numbers of participating agencies and the dollar volume
involved.
After the fall 1997 commission cuts, ARC developed a way to
merge its fee processing and sales processing programs, which
injects a third party -- the agency's CRS -- into the equation.
This, in turn, prompted ARC to get commitments of confidentiality
from the CRSs.
Under the program, agents use an automated miscellaneous charges
order (MCO), which is plated on ARC, for each service fee
transaction. Service fees are included in the weekly sales report
and are used to offset any amounts due ARC or increase an overage
due the agency that week.
The nearly 2,000 agency locations that are reporting their sales
electronically can sign up immediately for the program. The vast
majority of agents, which still report sales on paper, can sign up
if their CRS systems can accommodate an automated MCO printed on
automated ticket and boarding pass (ATB) stock.
Sabre currently takes an automated MCO, and the other three
major CRSs are expected to add the capability in 1998.
For more information, agents can consult ARC's Web site at
http://www.airreport .com, call its fax-back service at (800)
811-1608 and request document 111, send an information request to
fax (703) 816-5100 or call (703) 816-8003.