Effective February 24, Airlink has limited its ‘Manage Booking’ function on the Airlink mobile app and website, to direct bookings only, and an anonymous agent told Travel News that the new limited access was impacting his agency’s frequent flyer clients.
“Most of my frequent flyers use airline apps to keep abreast of their travels, their frequent flyer miles and tiers etc. From my personal experience, responsible frequent flyers are happy to entrust their personal assistants to use our agency to make bookings and handle travel, as long as they have the final control over their seats, miles and status. For them, not being allowed to have this oversight, simply because they did not book directly with the airline, is a serious issue.”
This agent says the airline’s limiting of this functionality so that it applies to direct bookings only, is potentially extremely damaging to agencies' business.
“I am deeply disappointed, especially as I can't see why the airline would exclude agency bookings, other than to push travellers to direct bookings,” said the agent.
But Airlink says it made the change to protect the agent’s ‘ownership’ of the client and responded to Travel News’s enquiries with the following statement.
“The Manage Booking function on flyairlink.com and the Airlink mobile app are now offered to Airlink’s direct customers as a support mechanism post-booking.
“The decision to restrict travel agency customer bookings is to preserve the agent’s ‘ownership’ of the booking,” explains Airlink. “If a customer who has booked and was ticketed through a travel agency, tries to make changes to their booking on the Airlink website or Airlink app, the booking ‘ownership’ automatically transfers from the agent to Airlink and then restricts the travel agent’s control of their booking.
“However, it is important to note that online check-in with seat selection, seat changes and ancillary services, known as ‘Self Service hub’, is not part of the ‘Manage Booking’ hub and is open to all Airlink customers, irrespective of whether they booked directly with Airlink or through their travel agent. This can be done within 24 hours before departure.”
Agent – please comment below and let us know what you think.
