Reading a holiday news story about record passenger numbers flying to celebrate Christmas with their loved ones and/or snatch a bit of mid-winter sun is a holiday tradition. It could all add up to a lot of air miles for frequent flyer accounts. Well, maybe but the rules on bonuses for passengers, TMCs and buyers are changing.
Eurostar and the Lufthansa Group have both announced that they are joining the band of carriers that are changing the basis of calculating traveller rewards from class of travel to the price paid for that travel.
Eurostar customers will now earn one point for every £1 spent on tickets. From March members of Miles & More will be credited with miles on the basis of the price of the flight which Lufthansa describes as "the price of the ticket plus any additional fees charged by the respective airline and on the frequent flyer status [of the traveller]".
The new reward system applies to flights with the Lufthansa Group airlines Lufthansa, SWISS, Austrian, Brussels Airlines and Eurowings, as well as to all other Miles & More partner airlines, provided the ticket for the flight was issued by a Lufthansa Group airline.
Under the old system, booking class and the length of the route determined the number of miles that were awarded plus a bonus according to frequent flyer status.
Frequent flyer programmes were previously seen by travel managers, depending on their point of view, as a way either of encouraging travellers to use particular carriers or for frequent travellers to be tempted to choose to fly with a non-partner airline and become non-compliant.
Now that rewards will be linked to price, the desire to be a good corporate citizen and spend less of the company's money might weaken.
And lest you think changing rules are just a traveller issue, think about the possible effects of the explosion in TMCs using GDSs' private channels, as illustrated by British Airways and Iberia striking a number of deals with individual travel management companies to avoid IAG's surcharge on GDS bookings. So, as well as avoiding a fee by booking directly on the airline's website or via a direct connection, you can avoid it by using a private channel but ah, the financials change a bit here too.
It is understood that agencies will not be credited with a GDS transaction for bookings made on these channels so there will be a fall in the volumes accrued for the annual GDS incentive payment which consequently might fall. However, the TMCs are likely to be compensated not only by saving the cost of the booking fee they might otherwise incur but by supplier payments. Some carriers, you see, are apparently paying incentives to TMCs that book through an NDC-supported connection.
As the size of these payments will be affected by corporate volumes, buyers need to do their homework to understand whether their TMC is gaining (supplier fee; no GDS booking surcharge) or losing (GDS incentive; GDS booking surcharge) as a consequence of the new models floating about.
The net effect of a corporate's business on a TMC's profitability will be an important factor for the next round of fee negotiations.
It's not just travellers who need to look at their "What if" options.