Following the introduction of Lufthansa's €16 GDS fee, the airline has urged the trade to use its online direct agent portal. An independent business travel agent shares his experience of using the Lufthansa agent portal.
- Unlike the GDS, you cannot make and hold an option. You can only instantly book and pay for a seat.
- Once you have confirmed a reservation, you cannot action any changes through the portal – you have to call the LH call-centre to make the changes. And depending on the circumstances you can be on hold for a long time.
- The booking portal doesn’t offer a credit facility, so have to pay via agency or client credit card – which attracts a £4.50 fee.
- There is limited ability to offer interline tickets with other carriers.
- Unable to split-class a booking: one of the biggest arguments LH has is that the GDSs don’t show content easily to upsell. Well, the portal didn’t allow me to book economy class out and business class back on an itinerary to the US for a client. So actually the portal offers less content than the GDS, yet Luftansa argues that the GDSs don’t provide enough. Maybe you can split-class or upsell on this portal – if so, it’s made incredibly difficult and I haven’t figured how yet. Surely the point of the agent portal is to make things easier to upsell LH products and services.
So, even before we come into any MI [management information] reporting issues or Duty-of-Care issues for corporate clients, this tool is far too basic. It’s simply not fit for purpose.
I'm currently not offering my clients Lufthansa flights wherever there are other viable options on a given route. The airline should remember how much higher average ticket values are on the GDSs compared to direct-sell channels.