Low cost carriers must work with trade says BTI UK head

Low cost carriers are going to have to start working more with agents, says BTI UK managing director, Mike Platt, because so many of their bookings come through the trade. Speaking to TravelMole at Tuesday’s Guild of Business Travel Agents lunch, Mr Platt said booking low cost airlines was not easy for agents. He said: “We have had to invest in parallel technology to book through the easyJet site and other low cost airlines, in order for us to book as an end user would. “The low cost airlines band about these figures of X percentage of bookings coming direct through the airline’s website, usually over 90%, but in fact we did 42,000 low cost bookings through BTI in the UK alone last year.” According to Mr Platt, agents have two big issues with low cost carriers. “These are a) don’t think you are getting everything booked direct because most bookings are still coming through an agent and b) it is not a low cost booking service. It is costing us a lot more.” Mr Platt says low cost carriers should look into finding an alternative system for taking bookings through the trade. He said: “It may not cost them a penny more to find a more efficient way of taking bookings through agents.” In order to search low cost and full-service schedule carriers at the same time, Mr Platt says agents have to use screen scraping. He says it is time consuming and expensive, and the tab is usually picked up by the customer in the end. Mr Platt says it takes three times as long to make a booking that involves checking low cost fares in addition to using a GDS. He added: “The total cost of travel some times is more with low cost carriers, and business travellers are beginning to realise this. They are also taking into account the benefits of being able to make changes to a ticket – our travellers often change their tickets three or five times before travelling.” Mr Platt says this is why BTI has started using a software program called Total Trip Cost, which calculates the end to end journey cost on top of the air fare, to give business travellers a more realistic estimate of the cost of travel. He said: “We are not into knocking low cost carriers, they are good value for money. But customer pressure will ultimately make it necessary for low cost airlines to work more with agents.”