BRITISH Airways head of leisure sales UK and Ireland Tricia Warwick has admitted the company has been ‘faceless’ and difficult to access for tour operators in the last few years.
Speaking at the Association of Independent Tour Operatorsconference in Porto, Warwick acknowledged the comments of AITOmembers who said they had found it difficult to contact BA and found the company unhelpful.
“I think that is a fair comment,” she said. “BA has acknowledged it is faceless and difficult to access, from calling to writing to us. We have spent a lot of time in the last few years trying to turn that round.”
Kate Murdoch, joint managing director of Greece specialist Laskarina Holidays, complained that it could not get an allocation of seats on BA’s Athens route and had to use Olympic Airways instead. Sunvil Holidays managing director and Travel Weekly columnist Noel Josephides complained that it wanted to buy seats from BA directly rather than access them through consolidators.
Annabel Lawson, director of archaelogical tour specialist Andante Tours, also criticised BAfor not answering its telephones within 20mins.
“You are our national carrier with the best timed flights, you have our customers’ confidence but we are driven to use another airline,” she said.
Warwick called on AITOmembers to take up any problems with the airline through the association’s Aviation Committee.
She acknowledged the process of allocating seats was not perfect. “We have to get our process slicker in evaluating how we carve up seats.”
She added BA’s new strategy of targeting higher yield economy traffic would benefit tour operators. “The segments of our business are changing and that favours the tour operator,” she said.
She said BA had appointed a sales manager dedicated to AITOwho was now holding quarterly meetings with AITOexecutive manager Julia Hendry to help iron out any problems.
She admitted that BAhad not treated the association well in recent years.