Carlson Wagonlit Travel (CWT) in America has reportedly warned its clients there that it will charge them $2 per airline ticket from September 1.
CWT said the fee would be charged on all bookings except those done through its own direct channel, Symphonie, according to the report in Business Travel News, or those done through Sabre for American Airlines.
These Sabre bookings would be subject to the airline's fee of $3.50 per segment, also due to come in on September 1.
The reported move by CWT represents a notching up of the battle in the States between airlines and GDSs over fees which many fear could come to Europe if and when GDSs are de-regulated here.
Other TMCs in America have so far not indicated if they will follow CWT's apparent lead.
The CWT charge, if it goes ahead, will apply only to bookings in America.
The CWT move arises from the decision by GDSs in America to shift more of their costs onto TMCs which will pass them on, at least in part, to their clients.
In return the TMCs get access to full content of airlines signed up with the GDSs as well as protection from any airline fees. This is the so called "opt-in" programme.
But several American airlines say they will impose a $3.50 charge per segment for any bookings made through unpreferred channels, that is GDSs with whom they do not have a full contents agreement.
The airlines are American, Continental, Northwest and United. All have said they will levy the charge from September 1 – again only in America.
For American the unpreferred channels include Sabre, the largest GDS in the world, with which its agreements have run out.
In the Business Travel News story, Mike Koetting, executive vp of CWT, is quoted as saying: "We did the math on what it would cost across our client portfolio and figured out that $2 was the number, and that's certainly not a number that enriches CWT.
"It's a pass-through calculation - a broad average across our client portfolio averaging the average number of segments we had per air transaction.
"The $2 per air transaction is the amount that we believe, for simplicity's sake, is what the cost pass-through amounts to.
"They (our clients) are certainly not happy about it - neither are we, for that matter. There's a great deal of democracy in the way that we're passing the cost through.
"We incur the cost on every one of our segments, and therefore we have no choice but to pass it through on every one of our segments."
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