Agents in the driving seat

The article originally appeared in TravelWeekly Australia

GDS provider Sabre Pacific launched a sophisticated analytics tool in Australia this
month that it claims will help agents wrest control of bookings away from airlines.
As Justin Wastnage writes, some travel agencies have already done so

Sir Richard Branson was the
keynote speaker at July’s
Flight Centre global
gathering in Barcelona. The British
tycoon is invited to speak at lots of
events, but this conference was
sponsored by both British Airways
and its Australian buddy Qantas to
the tune of half a million dollars.
Flight Centre’s famously
competitive chief executive Graham
‘Skroo’ Turner was sending a
message that no airline can assume
a cosy relationship with his group.
After a nine month sabbatical, his
first task back at the helm in April
this year was to sever the chain’s
ties with Singapore Airlines,
causing the carrier to scuttle back
with better commercial terms.
Conventional wisdom has it that
only Skroo has the power to turn
off airlines at whim. But this month
Sabre Pacific, the largest global
distribution system (GDS) in the
Americas, launched its Contract
Optimization add-on that it claims
will give mid-sized corporate
agencies the same power.
“Travel management companies
have let the power drift away to
their clients through policies and
to airlines through technology,”
said Richard Morgan, Sabre’s
general manager for sales,
marketing and product.
Essentially a complex bookings
analysis tool, Contract Optimization
has been trialled by a US corporate
agency Travizon, who used it to
divert sales to secondary preferred
airlines once targets with primary
preferreds had been met. It earned
10% more overrides and reduced
clients’ corporate spend by 5%.
Gai Tyrrell, Sabre chief executive
in Australia suggests airlines will
not be happy with this kind of
automated sales tool, but says “it’s
time power returned to agents”.
Other GDS suppliers are
working on similar tools, which will
form a key part of the tough
negotiations taking place this year.
Morgan says the additional cost of
the tool will be reimbursed if an
agency does not increase overrides.
The GDS providers have more
bells and whistles up their sleeves,
notably new mobile phone versions
of their web itinerary tools. The
GDS companies are hoping agents
will seize the opportunity to shift the
relationship more in their favour. ■