French travel managers are prepared either to change travel agencies or change some of their preferred airlines when Air France brings in zero commission from April 1.
A big majority also said that if they changed their method of paying agents after April 1, they would switch to transaction fees.
The findings come in a survey carried out by the Association of Corporate Travel Executives (ACTE) of 100 buyers and travel managers in France with an annual air travel budget ranging from under 2m to more than 15m.
Just over half the managers worked for a French company but more than 60% had an international role.
Of the 69 who answered the question of what zero commission would mean to them, 69.6% said they would change some of their preferred airlines while 45% said they would change agents. Some clearly would do both.
Air France announced last July that it would cut its present 7% commission in France to zero from next month.
To cushion the blow, the carrier said it would pay 1-2 per coupon on international flights until March 31, 2006 and a small payment on domestic flights until 2007.
More than half the travel managers (55.6%) said they currently paid their agents a management fee with 40.4% paying a transaction fee.
But just over half said they would change that when the “new model” came in. 76% of those changing said they would then pay transaction fees. 13% said they would pay management fees.
Surprisingly with just weeks to go, only 25% of managers said their strategy to deal with zero commission was in place. Nearly 60% said it was still in preparation while 16% said it was not ready yet.
The most favoured strategy in dealing with the new model was renegotiations with agents. 70% of managers said they would be doing this.
But other moves included renegotiations with airlines (61%), more use of online booking (69%), changing or toughening the travel policy (44%), driving more savings in the travel budget ((44%) and more use of both low cost carrier (29%) and the train (23%).