GDSs could pay no-frills to sign up

TravelMole Fast Conference Special: The prospect of paying no-frills carriers to participate in a GDS could not be ruled out, according to Worldspan’s Martin Tyler-Bennett. Mr Tyler-Bennett, who is director EMEAA, airline distribution hosting and IT solutions for Worldspan, was speaking at Tuesday’s inaugural TravelMole Fast Conference in London. Worldspan has signed a number of no-frills carriers including earlier this month signing the Canadian carrier, CanJet. Other no-frills carriers signed up are AirTran, American West, Frontier, Spirit, ATA, and WestJet in the US and Canada and Virgin Express, Duo and Air Berlin in Europe. However, conference moderator, Jeremy Skidmore said he thought UK agents didn’t really care about these carriers – he said the crucial ones are Ryanair and easyJet. Mr Tyler-Bennett answered: “All this comes from small starts.” When asked by a member of the audience whether he thought GDSs needed no-frills airlines more than the airlines needed them, Mr Tyler-Bennett said he thought it was a bit of both. Although GDSs need no-frills to ensure they offer comprehensive air content, he said that recent EU rulings could mean no-frills carriers have to change their model. Mr Tyler-Bennett said: “No-frills will increasingly have to abandon smaller airports in favour of larger ones to avoid paying subsidies. This means that they will have to start looking into practices like interlining and codeshares. Their current systems do not support that so they will have to start looking to GDSs for that functionality.” BA head of corporate sales, Ian Heywood said he couldn’t envisage no-frills carriers changing their pricing model to work with GDSs, but Mr Tyler-Bennett replied that GDSs may need to change their model to accommodate no-frills carriers. “We both need each other – no-frills airlines and GDSs. We might have to pay them [no-frills carriers] to participate in the future. In a de-regulated environment, GDSs will have to work differently”, he said. He added: “Any low cost model has to be examined at the value points of the chain and if you decide there is money to be made at that point because of the importance of agent perception of having no-frills airlines in their armoury, then we will go to that model.” Sabre director UK, Ireland and the Nordic region, David Brown was also on the panel. He said GDSs need no-frills more than the airlines need them. Mr Brown also said that Virgin Blue participates in Sabre in every country outside of Australia, a trend he thought may begin to emerge across more no-frills carriers. Report by Ginny McGrath For information on future TravelMole Fast Conferences, please visit www.travelmole.com/fastconferences, email [email protected], or call +44 (0)20 7691 3292.