| Journal: TWUK | Section: |
| Title: | Issue Date: 17/04/00 |
| Author: | Page Number: 92 |
| Copyright: Other |
Operators urge use of service fees
EUROSTAR and Eurotunnel are encouraging agents to charge a service fee after refusing to raise commission levels.The rail operators stated their views at a recent meeting with ABTA’s transport committee chairman Doug Wardle in London.
Eurostar has just announced plans to slash its commission rate for electronic bookings from 9% to 7% on June 1. It is also considering axing the 5% commission rate it pays for telephone bookings and replacing it with a transaction fee system from January 1 next year (Travel Weekly March 13).
Meanwhile, Eurotunnel cut commission from 8% to 7% and reduced overrides by 1% last summer (Travel Weekly July 12).
The two companies insisted that they had been forced to cut commission in order to remain competitive.
However, Wardle said while the operators were managing to cut their costs and keep fares down, introducing service fees would only end up hurting the retailers.
“It makes the agents look bad if they have to tack fees on top of published fares,” he said.
Eurostar added it was prepared to look at ways of improving the cost effectiveness of making bookings for agents and pledged to explore the use of an extranet.
Stubborn: both operators refused to raise commission