Air Canada Needs to Restore Tango Fares to GDSs

Republished with permission from The Beat.

By: Christiane Théberge, Vice-President, Public Affairs, Association of Canadian Travel Agencies; Lyell Farquharson, Spokesperson, Canadian Corporate Travel Association; Kevin Mitchell, Chairman, Business Travel Coalition

Reacting to the outcry against its heavy-handed, surprise decision to withdraw access to its Tango fares, Air Canada has taken a step back to restore a connection with professional travel agents who sell 70% of its tickets.  Air Canada has announced the return of Tango fares to the Air Canada agency web portal with a credulity-straining proclamation that the airline’s “concern has always been the agencies’ access to content in an environment they can work in.”   We’re glad Air Canada is finally talking, but travel professionals are right to maintain their skepticism of the nation's dominant airline. The real opportunity for Air Canada to achieve alignment with its air travel distribution partners, and corporate customers, is to return Tango fares to the Global Distribution Systems (GDSs) without delay.   

An airline serious about developing a good working environment for travel agents would in fact do well to talk to travel agents. Travel agents are still waiting for the phone to ring. This leads us to ask if consultation is a long-term priority for Air Canada. Most Canadian travel agents would tell Air Canada that the web portal is a woefully inadequate place to do business, just as it is for agents in the U.S. and elsewhere in the world. Yes, we’re glad that Tango fares are available through this relatively inefficient channel, but if Air Canada’s leaders are expecting hearts and roses from the agency and corporate travel manager communities, they should be seated while they’re waiting. 

Travel professionals do not want to be forced to navigate unique supplier websites in order to serve their customers when a far more welcoming and efficient distribution platform exists – namely, the GDS. In the U.S., the National Commission to Ensure Consumer Information and Choice in the Airline Industry in 2002 studied this issue in depth and concluded in its final report to the President and Congress that web portals, among other things, do not allow agents to control the passenger record, to serve as a value-added travel manager, to work quickly and efficiently, to consolidate financial records and to keep all passenger profiles in one place. The report concluded that “the lack of integrated information imposes costs on agents, both for separate search equipment and in the extra time required to perform the searches. These costs will ultimately be reflected in service charges to consumers.”

Marc Rosenberg, Air Canada’s distribution head, tells us that Canadian agents have a different model than those who work in the U.S. He says that Canadian agents who are used to booking low cost carriers have been programmed differently to embrace and accept the Internet where their American cousins have resisted. He says that Canadian agents looking for data in one single source have been able to accomplish that by acquisition of third-party software. Here’s the truth Mr. Rosenberg: from a travel agency perspective, web portals just don’t cut it, including Air Canada’s. They create the need for expensive and inefficient workarounds. They distract travel agents from giving their customers optimal service.   

The history of travel distribution boils down to three essential, related themes: competition, content and control. Dominant airlines like Air Canada appear to believe that if they can withhold access to fare content from distributors, they can seize control of passengers by forcing them into the company store. To this we say: “Air Canada, many customers resent this treatment.” Business and leisure travelers alike say “no thanks” to being deprived of personalized, streamlined, value-added service that facilitates travel shopping and buying – the sort that comes from a travel agent automated by a GDS. Air Canada should back up its rhetoric about concern for travel agents’ working environment with good faith action – instead of a small step, it should take all the necessary steps to restore Tango fares to the GDS so that we can all focus on what’s important: serving our end-customers the best way we know how.