Yet, I remember, when BA dropped commission, them saying stuff like “We do not owe travel agents a living”. What has happened, suggests otherwise. Agents duly said “Okay” and got on with changing their perspective and approach. Airlines promptly sat back and thought that they had cracked it and waited for the dollars to role in. They forgot a few basics (not to mention the effects the Mr O’Leary’s of this world had in mind. A few other things went wrong as well. They were legacy airlines, burdened with archaic working practices, routes that just didn’t work and other hopeless costs. The agency network changed – they didn’t.

The main thing airlines do not realise is that they are not retailers. Retailing is a different skill set – you don’t see TESCO airlines and even if TESCO were to start flying people about the place, they would get someone else to do it and use their brand only. For some reason best known to themselves, airlines then decided, to help them in their (retailing) quest, to ask the techy types – indeed to ask anyone to help them APART from the very people who they actually needed to help them, the on and offline agents. Techy people are good at solving a techy problem – the trouble is, what was the right problem that neede solving, in the first place. Not being retailers, airlines could not answer that question properly. Nonetheless, they forged onwards and so we have the blind leading the blind.

Now, even the likes of the low-cost types are not retailers – you can see that in the way they sell. It is not retailing at all. It’s getting ancillary revenue by tricks that border on the sharp practice – making it hard to get rid of extras whilst booking, using a low or zero fare and then adding stuff on – this is not retailing.

What is? For example, when I go to TESCO to get some butter I usually come out with a few other bits as well. The thing is, I do not feel bitter and twisted about it. I do not feel resentful, I feel that I have made a buying decision that I wanted to make – I hadn’t, of course, I had been lured into additional purchases by very clever and leading edge retailing techniques – and THAT is the difference between TESCO and an airline. Between retailing and sharp practice, between having a customer feeling good and coming back for more and the customer bitterly regretting every second of a journey they have to make with XYZ airlines from the moment they go on the website.

Sure, low cost airlines can make profit – but for how long. Sooner or later some of the techniques used by airlines will be seen for the rather tenuous grasp on legitamacy that they hold. People will have had enough of a pound here a pound there – despite a notorious Germans supposition that “The people will fall for a big lie rather than a small one”

So, we are back to embracing all sales channels. To make travel work, it is airlines that need to relaise that the longer they refuse to acknowledge their profound weaknesses, the harder it will be to return to sustainable profitability. Ironically, the retail experience is out there and more than willing to work together. (The amazing travel industry – the only business where the various facets are at each other throats!) The thing is, are their enough corporate brain cells left in various boardrooms to realise this.

Susan’s point is interesting – if this is so good why are they not pushing it? The only airline I know which has gone “full monty” and has integrated ancillaries IN the booking path is British Airways using Openjaw. On the other hand we have heard AA last week saying that anything they can win on upselling air seats vastly overcomes ancillary sales, so they know where to put their (limited) resources.

My take is that each airline is different in terms of strategy, focus, culture, pride and balance sheet, and this can drive many different decisions.

Daniele

[I am not affiliated with any of the companies mentioned above].

Hmmmm…. These Aravle Tgents seem to be getting too much “bounty”. Let’s tell them – no bounty, they can charge a fee……

Oh! And I seem to be about n squillion dollars short in my technology budget as well……

Of course,an airline website will only give you what that airline wants to give you (which may well prove self-defeating, long term, from a customer psychology point of view) – the OTA’s go a lot further in giving you options (one thing airline websites do not want you to have – or possibly aggregators who are only able to aggregate that which people want aggregated) – so the answer is still, to integrate the supply side of travel with all the available sales channels. OTA’s mind you, cannot work wrinkles. Only human travel agents can do that. And trust me, there are an awful lot of wrinkles to be worked!

Plus ca change, ca change…