Airlines “would love less transparency” on prices and aim to make fare comparison “more difficult” for consumers, the head of the European travel agents’ and tour operators’ association ECTAA has told MEPs.
ECTAA secretary-general de Blust told the Committee on Transport and Tourism of the European Parliament: “The GDSs were created by the airlines.
“Because they were the airlines’ animals, GDSs were biased. The legislator said, ‘That is not so good’ and that is how regulation came about with rules regarding display.”
Subsequently, airlines decided to divest themselves of the GDSs, de Blust said.
“Thirty years later they want to reinvent a GDS at the expense of distribution and at the expense of consumers. At the end of the day, travellers will pay.”
He said: “The airlines would love to have less transparency and to make comparison more difficult. That is what the unbundling of fares is about and that is what the airlines’ policy vis-a-vis GDSs is about.”
Responding to testimony from airline association Iata, de Blust said: “Iata says the GDSs constitute a bottleneck. But then how could the Lufthansa Group add a distribution cost charge of €16 to its fares and it seems this didn’t affect Lufthansa sales – or, at least, it didn’t affect Lufthansa sales in those markets in which Lufthansa Group is dominant?”
Lufthansa imposed a €16 distribution cost charge on GDS bookings in September 2015. British Airways and Iberia followed suit with GDS charges last November, and Air France-KLM added GDS
booking charges this April.
In his testimony, De Blust referred to former American Airlines’ chief executive Robert Crandall, who ran the airline up to 1998.
He told MEPs: “Bob Crandall, at a conference 20 years ago, showed his watch and said, ‘The problem in my industry is very simple. If I want to find the cheapest price for this watch in New York I need to visit 2,000-3,000 shops. In the airline industry, a customer walks into a travel agency and because of GDS technology gets the full range of available fares in a market.’”