NBTA Research Illustrates How Businesses will Respond to Distribution Market Changes
Association Shared Data with American, Delta, Sabre, Worldspan
Alexandria, VA | The National Business Travel Association (NBTA) today provided to American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Sabre and Worldspan key results of a survey of 237 NBTA member travel managers as the travel industry braces for changes in the air travel distribution financial model. The results illustrate the challenges presented to corporations by two major airline-global distribution system (GDS) relationships with questionable futures.
The survey was conducted in advance of a recent online seminar for NBTA travel manager members that helped them prepare for the role-out of GDS opt-in programs, airline fees for bookings made through non-preferred channels, the possibility of losing full airline content in some GDS products and the likelihood of increased costs for business air travel. The top three concerns raised by respondents with relation to the distribution changes are cost implications (90%), booking efficiency (75%) and fragmentation of content (68%).
Other key data points from the survey are as follows:
- 71% of travel managers report a portion of transactions are either American Airlines bookings made through Sabre or Delta Air Lines bookings made via Worldspan. If those airline-GDS pairs do not hammer out agreements on their relationships, those transactions will likely to move to other channels or those bookings will likely be made on other airlines.
- 22% are working with their travel management companies to gain the ability to determine which channel is used for fare searches and bookings, and 54% said they were “very interested” in such capabilities. That level of control would enable travel managers to drive cost-savings by moving to cheaper distribution options and potentially working directly with airline partners to share savings.
- Travel managers are planning their responses to potential increases in distribution costs, including those that would be caused by American and Sabre or by Delta and Worldspan failing to reach a workable agreement on behalf of their mutual customers. The following percentages said they would take these actions to mitigate price hikes:
- 24% said their companies would take fewer trips.
- 25% would use more phone/video/web conferencing.
- 21% would increase use of low cost carriers.