Business Travel iQ held a live debate to discuss Lufthansa's controversial decision to introduce a EUR16 charge on bookings made via the GDS.
Moderated by our content director Mark Frary, the debate included insight and opinions from Scott Gillespie, managing director of tClara; Christian Schindler, regional director UK, Ireland and Iceland at Lufthansa; Paul Tilstone, CEO of Festive Road and Paul Wait, CEO of the GTMC.
While the fee has divided opinion it has no doubt helped the industry approach many areas mentioned during this debate including the personalisation of travel, distribution methods, content on technology platforms and where the airline industry is heading.
<object id="flashObj" width="720" height="350" classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=9,0,47,0">
<param name="movie" value="https://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9?isVid=1&isUI=1">
<param name="bgcolor" value="#FFFFFF">
<param name="flashVars" value="@videoPlayer=4352032717001&playerID=2725980120001&playerKey=AQ~~,AAACep6Kegk~,VrJDA4sYpyC88jL8AqRj38AN5exQN4bK&domain=embed&dynamicStreaming=true">
<param name="base" value="http://admin.brightcove.com">
<param name="seamlesstabbing" value="false">
<param name="allowFullScreen" value="true">
<param name="swLiveConnect" value="true">
<param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><embed src="https://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9?isVid=1&isUI=1" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" flashvars="@videoPlayer=4352032717001&playerID=2725980120001&playerKey=AQ~~,AAACep6Kegk~,VrJDA4sYpyC88jL8AqRj38AN5exQN4bK&domain=embed&dynamicStreaming=true" base="https://www.brightcove.com" name="flashObj" width="690" height="350" seamlesstabbing="false" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" swliveconnect="true" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/index.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash" title="Adobe Flash Player"></object>