I’m not going to use the three letters I promise but, in this year’s ITM Buyer Priorities Survey, the single greatest challenge facing our buyers was confirmed to be access to the airline content needed.

There are many reasons why this problem exists and still more reasons why it is such a thorny issue for management travel programmes. Although there are benefits to be derived from new methods of airline retailing, some of the current frustrations threaten the integrity of and confidence in the travel programme itself.

Airlines, of course, have every right to distribute and retail in any way that suits their business model – and goodness knows they’ve endured some very tough years recently.

The alarming element of our survey results for me, however, were that both the proportion of buyers who listed this as their number one challenge and the amount who stated that they didn’t have the content they needed have both noticeably increased over the last three years. This means that this “issue” is still worsening and, in general, modern airline retailing approaches (still no three letters here) are actually becoming less compatible with corporate travel programmes.

So, something needs to change to reverse this direction of travel doesn’t it? There are large scale dynamics in place here and the evolving ways that airlines and suppliers in general incentivise business through TMCs, along with the way that TMCs generate profitable income are relevant. These are market forces that do not shift quickly but it’s fair to say we are at an inflection point.

ITM’s Buyer Priorities Survey also state that the primary KPI for our buyers’ TMCs going forward will be full access to their required content. I believe that this subject is going to see significant developments this year and it will be fascinating to see which players harness the opportunity to turn this from a buyer headache to something that finally adds value.

itm.org.uk