ANGRY business travel agents have hit out at British
Airways for putting up premium-class fares just four months after prices came
down to compensate agents for the introduction of Fresh Approach.
British Airways blamed market pressures for a decision
to raise transatlantic first and business class fares by an average of 5%. But London-based Hillgate Travel Airfares
manager Dean Cumming believes the increase shows BA had always intended to
restore prices close to pre-Fresh Approach levels.
“Before April 1, there were months
of discussion and consultation with agents about how fares would be adjusted to
compensate clients for our loss of income, then, without even a day’s warning,
prices went up again,” he said.
Geoff Lance, managing director of Champion Travel in
Hampton Hill, Middlesex, said he had expected BA’s premium fare prices would
creep up after April 1, while Birmingham-based BS Executive Travel managing
director Mike Barnard called the price hike a “typically cynical”
move that had taken agents by surprise.
“We have regular meetings with BA sales executives and there has
been no talk of these fare increases,” he said. “It makes life difficult because clients will remember us
telling them about prices going down.”
But BA field sales general manager Ian Heywood said
agents who thought the price increase had anything to do with Fresh Approach
were misinformed.
“Nothing in life is static – the price of fuel is
high and we have and we have to be able to compete,” he said. “If agents knew the costs involved they
would realise this has nothing to do with Fresh Approach.”
UK and Ireland head of sales Tiffany Hall had claimed
that reduced fares would remain “for good” (Travel Weekly January
15), but warned that prices would always change with market forces. Heywood insisted BA had reacted to similar
price increases led by American Airlines.
ABTA aviation committee chairman Sandy Macphearson
promised to take up any complaints he received with BA, while Cumming warned that
more agents than BA had bargained for were now selling away from the airline.
“I’m quite bemused that
BA says only 1% of agents are switch-selling, ” he said. “Everyone who is able to is
switch-selling – it’s stupid for us not to.”