Regulate Ancillary Distribution? No Thanks, Say TMCs & Travel Managers

A roomful of travel management company executives and corporate travel managers this week rejected the idea that the government should require that airlines provide ancillary information to GDSs.

During a panel discussion at The Beat Live, a business travel conference in Miami, moderator David Jonas, executive editor of the BTN Group, asked for a show of hands on whether the Department of Transportation’s (DOT) edition of consumer protections should require airlines to make the information available through all channels.

Not a single hand went up in the audience of about 100 executives.

Stick to the issues
Panelist Mike Cameron, chief executive officer of Christopherson Business Travel in Salt Lake City, said he believes the DOT should stick to aviation issues, such as aircraft safety, pilot safety and air traffic control, and “let the commercial marketplace decide” on the ancillary issue.

If the business travel community doesn’t want the mandate on ancillaries, why has it received so much attention, participants wondered.

Holly Hegeman, an airline analyst and publisher of PlaneBusiness, noted that lobbyists representing various industry sectors have conducted an intense campaign to convince the DOT that it is necessary.

Panelist Liz Mandarino, president of World Travel in Douglassville, Penn., said she believes the DOT isn’t enthusiastic about the mandate either.

“The DOT is hopeful that the dialogue will continue and they won’t have to make a decision,” she said.

Just talk
Mandarino, who has attended several meetings with the department over the ancillary issue, said, “Not a lot gets done. There’s a lot of talk and opinions about what the customer wants and needs.”

The panel also reacted to a statement from an earlier session in which John Smith, president of Tower Travel Management, said that airlines are being dragged “kicking and screaming” into distribution of ancillary products through the GDSs.

Mandarino disagreed with that assessment. “They absolutely do want to sell through the TMC channel,” she said. “And we can absolutely help them.”    

The upsell issue
While the TMC representatives don’t want a mandate about the distribution of ancillaries, they said they would like more tools to “upsell” using ancillary products and services.

“Agents don’t have the ability to upsell,” David LeCompte, chief executive officer of Short’s Travel in Waterloo, Iowa, said. “They don’t have the ability to deliver on it.”

“Our customers are forcing us to upsell,” Cameron said. LeCompte countered, “But does it exist on booking tools?”