The decision of the Guild of European Business Travel Agents (GEBTA) to go ahead with a pilot project for alternative agent accreditation and settlement systems will hardly come as a rude shock to the International Airline Transport Association (IATA).
As agents and travel managers made clear to BTE, the airline cartel has only itself to blame. They have been warning the Association for years that it was time to change.
Nadine Dewart, EMEA Travel Manager for BMC Software and chair of the ACTE EMEA region, said: “This illustrates the market's growing frustration in regards with IATA. “Similarly, ACTE together with CTAG has gathered over 160 signatures from its members in top European companies in an effort to petition the EC to require IATA to change its out-dated rules.
“ACTE supports any simplification in the distribution chain because simplification means that it will remove costs for all parties.”
Mike Platt, managing director of BTI UK and co-chair of the ACTE IATA task force, said: “There is a certain sad inevitability about this.
If IATA cannot respond to the changing market then alternative methods have to be explored.
“In the meantime I hope IATA finds a way to re-engineer itself in order to respond more positively to what is a dynamic and rapidly evolving industry.”
There is much justification in the industry's feelings. Talks between agents and IATA have been going on since 1998 and very little has changed. Instead, IATA has shown itself to be world champions at stone walling.
Several opportunities have arisen where the changes the agents are seeking could have been dealt with constructively.
IATA policy appears to have been to string the agents along while privately hoping that the EC would go on backing its biased rules.
Even EC ending of it support for IATA this year and its repeated suggestions the two sides sort the matter out have fallen on deaf ears in Geneva.
It now looks as if we are moving towards the end game.
The consultants which GEBTA employed to study the feasibility of alternative accreditation and settlement systems clearly came believe both are possible. Certainly the technology is available and the €2m which Michel de Blust, secretary general of GEBTA, says is needed should not present too much of a problem if the agents are determined enough.
The likely prize - the quite significant cuts in costs which the agents predict will come about under more liberal accreditation and settlement rules - should ensure the money is raised.
The apparent support - so far - of some of the legacy airlines and of some of the low cost carriers should also prove a spur to GEBTA.
Further comfort for the agencies and their clients should also come in that the balance of power in business travel has changed. The legacy airlines are not as all powerful as they used to be. Low cost carriers have begun eating into the corporate market, corporates and TMCs now increasingly act on a global or at least regional scale, advances in technology have facilitated great changes with more certainly to come and thanks to acquisitions and consolidation, TMCS are now powerful beasts which can exert immense leverage.
The path the agents are now set on could alter the way the industry is run. Unless IATA moderates its stance or GEBTA loses its nerve, 2005 could be a year of significant change.