The rapidly changing digital landscape makes airline ideas of ‘owning the customer’ outdated, according to Travelport managing director for northern Europe Simon Ferguson.
Interviewed for a Travel Weekly Europe report on ‘Travel, e-commerce and payments’, Ferguson said: “There is a huge drive towards owning the customer and personalisation.
“But many long-haul airlines say somewhere in the region of 80% of customers are one-time passengers a year. How do you ‘own’ a customer who travels once or twice a year?
“The concept of owning the customer looks increasingly outdated.”
Ferguson also hit out at airlines’ imposing surcharges on GDS bookings, saying: “Look at the furore [easyJet chief executive] Carolyn McCall, [IAG chief] Willie Walsh and [Ryanair boss] Michael O’Leary make about UK Air Passenger Duty (APD).
“They describe it as a tax on flying. A GDS surcharge is a tax on travellers. I would ask the airlines why they are happy to tax travellers when they are so unhappy when governments tax travellers.”
Lufthansa added a €16 fee to GDS bookings in September 2015 and British Airways and Iberia are due to impose a €9.50 fee from November 2017.
The GDS fees penalise customers of agencies and travel management companies (TMCs) which do not connect direct to the airlines.
Mastercard senior vice president for enterprise partnerships Diana Robino, who was also interviewed for the report, noted that about 70% of global travel is still booked through agents and said: “We estimate about 60% of travel agency booking payments globally involve some form of manual intervention.
“The agency has to make disbursements for all these elements in the back office. There is an opportunity for it to be done more easily and quickly through digital payments.”
The report, ‘Travel, e-commerce and payments: the landscape and trends in Europe’s major markets’, was launched at simultaneous events in London and Paris on Thursday.
Ferguson and Robino spoke at Travel Weekly Group’s Travolution Summit in London, while Frederic Vanhoutte, president and director general of Eventiz Media Group – parent of L’Echo Touristique – hosted the launch of the report at the Top Resa trade show in Paris.