Agents Up in Arms Over Travelport’s New Pricing Strategy

Travelport agents are up in arms over the GDS provider’s new pricing strategy, which packages a menu of solutions into a single price plan, beginning Jan. 1.

The bundle, called Travelport Agility, combines existing standalone solutions and services, some of which are free and some that incur fees, with new solutions.

Services that are bundled into Agility will no longer be offered on a standalone basis. Some of those services are considered “basic” for agency operations.

The change amounts to “a material change in our financial relationship” with Travelport, one agent said. The fees for Agility are likely to offset the incentives his company receives from Travelport, he said.

$35 per device
Under the new pricing, agencies will be charged $35 per month per active addressable device that uses one or more products or services within Travelport Agility (GTIDs/DAs for the Apollo and Galileo GDSs and Loggin DA, also known as Terminal ID, TA, Terminal Address, CRT and Device Address, for Worldspan).

Optional services that are currently free and that are not included in the Agility package will continue to be offered at no charge.

Hefty cost for large agencies
The total would come to $420 a year for a one-person operation. For large agencies, that fee can add up to tens of thousands of dollars in a single month.

One company said it has about 1,800 individual log-ins. Its total will be $63,000 a month, or $756,000 a year.

Worth the price?
Travelport executives have been saying that the company is moving toward a model in which agents will in some cases want to pay for technology that improves their work lives and productivity.

Kurt Ekert, chief commercial officer for Travelport, said, “We are moving away from simply being a distribution business to being a strategic marketing partner” for agencies and airlines, its two customer sets.

“The value proposition that we provide is going to evolve.”  

Agents voice concerns
So far, agents are not jumping for joy.

“I’m not thrilled,” the owner of a small agency in Minnesota said. “If I’ve got 20 people, that fee adds up.”

However, she is suspending judgment until further information is provided. If Travelport’s promise of increased productivity is fulfilled, with three or four additional bookings a day from each agent, she would be satisfied.

Key element
Ekert said a key element of the Travel Agility package is Smartpoint, an application that allows users to transact in the GDS language of their choice. (Worldspan agents will use Translator, a “functional equivalent” of Smartpoint, according to Ekert.)

Smartpoint blends graphical, point-and-click technology with the Focalpoint cryptic environment, creating a “hybrid” of native, cryptic-command and point-and-click navigation.

When Smartpoint was first announced in August, Travelport said it would speed up the reservations process, reduce call handling time and improve the agent’s user experience.

According to Travelport, the Smartpoint App “substantially” reduces overall keystrokes by 15%. It reduces keystrokes by up to 72% when searching for the best fare.

Charges never mentioned
An executive at a California travel management company said he was as much disturbed by the way Agility was introduced and the subsequent lack of response to his questions as he is about the fee.

His company signed a renewal agreement just a few weeks ago, and the Travelport representatives never mentioned that changes were just around the corner.

“They had to have known,” he said.

His new contract specifically waives fees for several of the solutions on the Agility list, and he has been unable to get clarification on whether Travelport intends to honor those waivers.

Ekert said he would not discuss any specific financial arrangements, but he added that “obviously, we’re not going to do anything that violates our agreements.”

Tough conversations anticipated
Travelport had anticipated some concerns, Ekert said.

“We expected some tough conversations. We’re asking them to pay a fee for a bundle of stuff that they weren’t paying for yesterday. Anytime you ask people to do that, they want to understand the value of what they’re buying.”

Ekert said he believes agents will understand that value when they see Smartpoint in action.

Ekert said that an agent who had tested Smartpoint described it as “the best GDS product he has ever seen.” Travelport had considered charging the same fee for Smartpoint alone as it is now charging for the full Agility package, he said.

Although this is not the first time Travelport agents will pay for access to certain products – they must pay for access to Southwest Airlines content, for example – the Agility package will be the first real test of Travelport’s revised model of its relationship with travel agencies.