6. Oh Lufthansa!
It was a tough year for Lufthansa. The airline had its hands full with a pilot union strike in mid-March. Then came the crash of Germanwings Flight 9525 on March 24. Another pilot strike followed in the fall.
Meanwhile the trade slammed Lufthansa’s June 2015 announcement that the airlines of the Lufthansa Group (Lufthansa, Austrian Airlines, Brussels Airlines and Swiss International Air Lines) would begin charging a 16 euro fee to every GDS booking effective Sept. 1. The company’s decision was criticized by everyone from both Amadeus and Sabre to Travelport to ACTA.
Critics said the move penalizes travellers based on the shopping channel they use: travellers either pay more for the same service or, in the case that travel agencies are forced to accept this new commercial strategy by modifying the way they access content just for LHG, there are extra IT costs that may ultimately be passed on to the traveller, putting the travel agent, and/or the end consumer, at a disadvantage.
By the end of October 2015 some 42% of business travel agencies said they had cut back on booking the Lufthansa Group since they implemented the 16 euro per booking surcharge. This was the finding of a new global survey conducted by Global Business Travel Association (GBTA) and its European partner network.
“We believe that the booking surcharge strategy has effectively backfired,” said Michael W. McCormick, GBTA Executive Director and COO, when the study was released. “The resulting actions demonstrate the high value that travel buyers place in the existing distribution network. The efforts by Lufthansa to fragment the distribution system by artificially adding cost is not working.”
