Buyers have urged British Airways to keep informing them when travellers upgrade their air travel using their own personal loyalty points.
BA has just made the move to allow its Executive Club passengers to upgrade to a higher cabin using personal loyalty points – a service already offered by many airlines including Virgin Atlantic and United.
But buyers, speaking at the ITM Forum in London last week, expressed concern about the move because they fear losing track of their travellers who upgrade their tickets in this manner, as the PNR would then be taken over by BA.
Mark Cuschieri, ITM’s industry affairs chairman, said: “From the buyers’ perspective it’s critical that every booking and any changes should be processed through the booking medium that you have selected.
“We don’t have a problem with loyalty programmes - they are a benefit for the end consumer. But we do have an issue where the supplier actively pushes our end user in another direction.”
ITM’s chief executive Simone Buckley said the issue had now come to the forefront of discussions because BA had chosen to do it.
“This has been going on with other airlines but it’s a more of an issue with BA because they are the dominant carrier,” said Buckley. “With so many people having BA executive cards there’s more chance of your travellers going away from the programme.
“The main problem is traveller tracking. If your traveller phones up the airline and upgrades their ticket, then the booking stays with BA. Currently there is a notification going to the TMC but they are only going to do that for three months. After that, if the passenger upgrades then the agent will not be notified which means there will be no tracking.”
Buckley also said that there could be problems in how companies and employees dealt with extra fees and taxes incurred by upgrading using personal points.
“Once you upgrade that means there will be an administration fee and extra tax on different routes,” she added. “Who pays for that and how is this charged to the company – will it be through expenses? Do they have to pay these charges themselves?”
Luke Goggin, head of corporate sales for BA, said the airline was “just catching up with the competition” in allowing travellers to use their loyalty points to upgrade.
“I recognise this has caught people’s attention and the reaction has caught us by surprise,” he told the forum.
Goggin added that the airline was currently sending SSR (Special Service Request) messages to the TMC which made the original booking when travellers upgraded.
But he could not confirm whether this process would continue permanently as it was “a resources issue”.
One buyer pleaded with BA to allow the corporate or their TMC to continue to control the PNR even if the passenger upgrades their ticket directly with the airline.
“Are you working on handing the control of the PNR back to us?” she asked. “We need to regain control of the PNR otherwise we cannot track our people and know what’s going on.”