Issues & Trends – December 2011
Gordon Wilson hails ‘constructive’ talks with Aussie airlines
TRAVELPORT’S UK-based president and chief executive Gordon Wilson emerged out-wardly pleased from high-level discussions with Australian airlines late last month.
A major topic in what Wilson called “conversations” with local carriers was the sale of ancillary services.
This is now a burning issue for airlines, agents and GDSs as the move towards offer-ing basic fares with options to purchase add-ons such as luggage allowances, meals and entertainment gathers pace.
Wilson says it is at the heart of the inventory access issues that triggered the acrimon-ious legal dispute being waged between his company and American Airlines (travelBulletin, January).
In Australia, there have also been some fireworks with Jetstar last year claiming that the GDSs do not have the technology to handle the sale of ancillary services.
That claim drew a tart response from Travelport’s former Australian and New Zealand boss, Shelley Beasley, who asserted the GDS com-panies absolutely did have the requisite technology. She suggested that the Jetstar claim was a furphy designed to cut agents out of the process and increase Jetstar’s direct sales.
Jetstar did not answer Beasley’s accusation and the controversy fizzled out.
In Australia, at least, the issue may now be generating more light than heat if Wilson’s comments are any indication.
He said he had “very constructive dialogue” with Australian carriers about working together “to generate more revenue”.
He told travelBulletin: “It’s not a technology argument. We certainly have that and we are very happy to work with airlines … The commercial dialogue is about what airlines are willing to pay.”
His visit here came shortly after a major win for Travelport in its ongoing legal battle with American Airlines (AA).
A federal judge in Texas threw out all but one count of the airline’s anti-trust case against Travelport, finding there was no basis for AA claims that Travelport mono-polises distribution to travel agencies, that it conspires with them to monopolise distribution and that its agreements with airlines and travel agencies unlawfully restrain trade.
AA can now pursue only one claim – that Travelport monopolises access to its travel agent subscribers.
But if the airline chooses to continue, Travelport has expressed confidence that “the Court will find this claim as meritless as AA’s other claims”.
Welcoming the judgement, Wilson told travelBulletin: “The industry would be better served if dialogue focuses on how to grow revenue.”
Meanwhile Wilson expressed satisfaction with progress in the roll-out of the company’s “Universal Desktop” to launch customer Flight Centre.
He said Flight Centre had completed migration of all its New Zealand stores and 70 per cent of its Australian locations. He laughed off comments by Sabre Pacific chief executive Gai Tyrrell who claimed that Travelport has still not delivered its Universal Desktop. He called criticism from a competitor “the most sincere form of flattery”.
He said the Universal Desktop had taken longer to develop because “it is not a re-skinned version of an old product”.
He described it as a “quan-tum leap” in aggregating con-tent from multiple sources.
Meanwhile he is also ebullient about the release of Smart Point, developed in conjunction with a Paris-based travel management company (presumably Carlson Wagonlit but Wilson declined to confirm this) to reduce key strokes.
He also confirmed that Travelport is stepping up its drive to provide agents with more non-air content, notably via the “Rooms and More” hotel booking engine based on Sprice meta-search technology which, he said, is extendable to other non-air products.
He highlighted the inclusion of limousine services which, he said, has given corporate agents the opportunity to earn lucrative commissions.
“Underpinning all this is a platform (Universal Desktop) that enables us to aggregate more content faster and get it to the point of sale faster and in a more user-friendly way for agents and consumers,” he said.