AGENTS say they lack
confidence in booking
no-bag fares through
Travelport’s Branded Fares
and Ancillaries solution.
This follows an article
in TNW October 30, ‘End
in sight for no-bag fares
frustration?’, where GDSs
said they were coming to
the party with solutions
to help alleviate agents’
frustrations with booking
these new types of basic
fares that exclude luggage
on long-haul routes.
Feedback following the
article is that agents
are resisting these
developments, particularly
in relation to Travelport’s
Smartpoint Branded Fares
and Ancillary offering.
In the October 30 article,
Travelport’s country
manager for Southern
Africa, Claudette Thorne,
told TNW that this offering
allowed agents to view rich
product descriptions and
user-friendly interfaces to
intuitively shop, price and
book baggage and other
ancillaries.
However, agents say
they prefer to use the
FQFXD entry in Galileo
to determine if a fare
includes baggage as this
is quicker and easier.
“When you do a best buy
quote in Galileo you can’t
easily compare apples
with apples and see if a
fare includes baggage.
You need to provisionally
hold the seats and then
type in the FQFXD entry
to determine if bags are
included or not. It is so
difficult to keep track of
this when you are quoting
many options per quote
every day,” says owner
of Sure Map Travel
Melissa Phillips.
Md of Sure Viva Travels,
David Pegg, agrees saying
that while the GDSs had
made inroads toward the
simplification of no-bag
fare bookings, he was
still using the old FQFXD
entry to reliably determine
if checked baggage was
included in a fare.
Director of Marmalade
Toast, David van den
Heever-Liebenberg, says
Smartpoint’s Branded
Fares and Ancillary
offering enables you to
upsell a no-bag fare to
include additional baggage
but is not a reliable
entry to determine what
baggage is included in
the fare price. For this, he
says, consultants should
use the FXD entry.
Another Johannesburg
consultant, who preferred
to remain anonymous,
says she has tried to use
the Branded Fares and
Ancillary offering but has
found that many of the
entries under the baggage
table were non-committal.
Some entries stated only
that the ‘fare may or may
not include baggage’.
Travelport has told TNW
it can only present the
basic fares as supplied
to them by airlines on
the Branded Fares and
Ancillaries product, which
is only being used by
257 airlines around the
world. These airlines have
individual approaches to
how they use Branded
Fares and the language
they use to describe the
fares.
“We constantly work with
airlines to ensure their
content is up to date and
encourage a rich and userfriendly description of their
fares and inclusions. We
fundamentally believe that,
with travellers continuing
to demand personalised
offers, it will benefit
airlines to fully utilise
initiatives like Branded
Fares and Ancillaries,”
she says.
