Among the many thousands of bureaucrats beavering away in Brussels, there is a small group which is looking into the likely impact of changes in the rules governing the GDSs or CRSs.
There seems little doubt that the European Commission is going to change the present rules. These require a level playing field so that all three major GDSs, Sabre, Amadeus and Galileo (now including it recent purchase Worldspan) present the inventories of their airline clients in a fair and unbiased way.
Until 2004, the US had similar rules on fairness but that was the year the GDSs were de-regulated, leaving, in effect, no such obligations on GDSs to present.
The impact of that de-regulation began to assert itself last summer in the stand off between American Airlines and Sabre, the hard ball games over fees and the inevitable passing on of increased costs to the corporates.
If de-regulation happens within the EU in the same way, that scenario is likely to repeat itself here. But there is a massively complicating ingredient in the European situation. Whereas in America, none of the airlines owns or has a stake in a GDS, in Europe Amadeus, the largest GDS, is partly owned by three major carriers, Air France, Lufthansa and Iberia. To go further, in France, Germany and Spain, where these carriers are the dominant, so is Amadeus.
So the question looms, just what changes is the EC going to make?
The worry of course is that it will require full de-regulation, as America has experienced. If that happened Amadeus, Air France, Lufthansa and Iberia would be in a position to exploit the market to their advantage, by presenting "their" airlines' inventories in a pre-eminent way and effectively squeezing out rivals, like BA.
The airlines could for their part put their inventories only on the Amadeus system, effectively putting Sabre and Galileo at a major disadvantage.
It should be stressed here that Amadeus and the airlines have repeatedly said they will not do this and there is no reason to disbelieve them.
But such a prospect would be possible under full de-regulation – and times, situations and owners change. Other, less scrupulous GDSs might also emerge so many in the industry feel it is as well to guard against such a possibility.
Kevin Mitchell founder of the US-based Business Travel Coalition and also of C-FARE, a Brussels-based organisation lobbying for safeguards to be built in to any change of rules governing CRSs in Europe to prevent the above scenario happening, wrote in a recent article in America: "A complete deregulation... is premature as long as major European airlines continue to own stakes and nominate executives to Europe's largest CRS.
"Under current circumstances, the CRS Code is all that restrains the inevitable propensity of parent carriers to discriminate against competing airlines as well as disloyal travel agencies and travel managers by biasing travel information in their favour."
But at the same time, there is a need for some changes in the GDS rules in Europe. These include, Mr Mitchell points out, "the repeal of the non-discriminatory booking fee and the requirement that fees for airlines and agents be related to costs."
It is changes like this for which C-FARE, - its members which include GDSs, airlines, travel agencies and travel managers - and European travel associations like ECTAA and GEBTA are lobbying.
Any EC proposals for change are not likely to be published for some months yet, maybe even next year and then a long period of consultation and debate is likely before any implementation.
But decisions on the types of changes are being discussed now and will affect the business of managing business travel.
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