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BA calls for reduced GDS fares
Friday, October 02, 2009 British Airways will insist companies distributing its air fares to travel agents reduce their prices when deals are renewed next year. The airline’s distribution three-year deals with Sabre, Amadeus and Travelport – owner of Worldspan and Galileo – expire in April.  The companies charge BA to distribute its fares on booking systems used by travel agents to service clients. BA’s director of sales UK, Richard Tams, said he would be asking the trade to call on the GDS companies to slash their prices. “We are very clear about this issue,” said Tams. "We are losing money while the GDSs are making profit margins of up to 30%. We will be putting pressure on them to make significant cost reduction as the present situation cannot be sustained. “We’ll also be asking our TMC partners to call on these companies to reduce costs.” Tams said the GDS companies were making more money than any other sector within the travel industry and insisted current deals were no longer acceptable. He said the issue was part of BA chief executive Willie Walsh’s assertion that a paradigm shift was taking place in the airline sector. Matthew Hall, Travelport’s vice-president for airline services in Europe, Middle East and Africa, said his company was ready to negotiate. “Travelport has a strong track record of successfully reaching competitive content agreements with the vast majority of leading European airlines,” he said. “For now, Galileo and Worldspan-connected travel agents continue to have access to BA’s full published content through our current global agreement and when we start our dialogue with BA about renewing this deal next year, we remain committed to reaching a mutually beneficial agreement that will continue to deliver rich, aggregated content to our travel agency customers on a long term, competitive basis.”
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