Business Travel News October 27, 2008 - (Page 20)

DESTINATIONS Rail Company Eurostar Slowly Progressing In Raising GDS Availability BY AMON COHEN Eurostar belatedly has achieved top-level distribution through global distribution systems in the United Kingdom and United States, but remains unavailable through GDSs in other countries. A number of teething problems mean that Eurostar has not yet officially announced its GDS presence, but BTN has learned that the Channel Tunnel passenger rail operator achieved primary screen access through Amadeus in April and Galileo and Sabre in June. That means agents and self-booking tool users can compare Eurostar times and fares alongside those of competing airlines on London-Paris and London-Brussels services. Eurostar originally announced in summer 2006 that it expected to achieve primary screen access in the ENGINEERING ADVANCES Eurostar achieves primary screen access. first quarter of 2007, but technical obstacles proved much greater than anticipated. “We are a train company trying to distribute in an online environment and the complexities of it were relatively unknown,” said Eurostar UK director of sales and marketing Emma Harris. “This is setting a precedent. We are the only train company in the world with primary screen access.” The new distribution method means bookings now can be issued as etickets, with passengers able to collect from selfservice machines in the United Kingdom and France. However, there EUROSTAR are a number of difficulties still to be resolved, one of which is the lack of GDS access in France or Belgium, preventing U.K. and U.S. agents from booking one-way tickets from Paris or Brussels. “I would say that GDS access for Eurostar is 80 percent done, with 20 percent still needing to be sorted out,” said a senior executive at a travel management company in the United Kingdom. “However, there is nothing major wrong. It is definitely better than it was a year ago.” Harris said Eurostar is looking to secure primary screen access in continental Europe as well. “We do have a plan to roll out in certain markets,” she said, “but it is really important for us to get it right in the United Kingdom first.” ■ While the impact this will have on corporate travel buyers remains to be seen, companies now are trying to put their best foot forward to maintain their share of the corporate market. “In order to maintain your position, you can’t let you standards slip,” Mackasek said. “You have to be on top of your game. You cannot cut back at all. ” “There’s less of the pie out there for people to get,” said CWT’s Kilduff. “At some point, there’s going to be a certain amount of competitiveness to either retain or to get customers.” “All I do know is that people are going to work twice as hard to maintain whatever levels of growth revenue they have, to maintain their biggest customer bases that are still in business,” Dav El’s Solombrino said, “and they’re going to try to do every improvement they can to improve service levels in order to be the differentiator between you and the next competitor.” ■ ehunter@btnonline.com ■ Crash Impacts NYC Limo Services Continued from page 6 Mike Fogarty, CEO of U.S. operations for Beverly, Mass.-based Tristar Worldwide Chauffeured Services, said, “We’re certainly seeing a bit of a slowdown. We do a lot of work for financial services firms. There seem to be fewer institutional roadshows than were happening in September.” However, he said the changes were not enough to make the company alter its cost structure. “The ones that still are Access the 2008 Corporate Travel Index see btnonline.com/perdiem traveling, they’re usually setting a new standard of who can use chauffeured car,” said John Olinger, president and CEO of Newport, R.I.based Rockstar Limo. “They’re upping the bar internally on what executive level you have to be at to use a chauffeured car company.” Stephen Spencer, presi- dent of Long Island City, N.Y.-based London Towncars Inc., said he had seen a 5 percent travel decrease in September 2008 from September 2007. “People are not traveling as much for business or pleasure so that affects us because we do a lot of airport work,” he said. “The overall effect is that travel in general is down and by connection our volume is down. It’s not significant yet but I don’t know what’s going to happen.” Spencer said he might cut back on fleet, but only by a few vehicles. “We’re hoping it’ll be better, and if it doesn’t we’ll tighten our belts a little bit and cut back where we can to stay in the black,” he said. David Balfour, director of ground transportation advisory services for American Express Business Travel, said he has seen clients looking into airport travel for employees in order to cut costs. www.BTNonline.com “Some companies are talking to their employees about moving more to taxibased services as opposed to a higher-car service because it’s a little bit more cost-effective for the company,” he said. Companies that have seen a slowdown in business are “selling cars, they’re laying off employees and they’re just tightening in every direction,” according to Kane. “Most people are cutting back approximately 20 percent to 25 percent of their fleets.” However, Kane said another aspect of the turmoil in the economy was the ability for capital-intensive chauffeured companies to get credit in the future. “We are very capital-intensive. We buy equipment to service our customers. The big challenge any capital-intensive industry goes through is obtaining the sources of credit,” Kane said. “We’ve seen the first foot drop but we haven’t seen the second one. And the second one will be when many businesses across the country will go to renew their lines of credit and many banks out there will turn back and say, ‘I’m sorry, your $1 million line of credit is now $500,000.’ ” MIKE FOGARTY Tristar Worldwide CEO The possible decrease in capital could mean longer holding times for fleet. “You have to turn your fleet. To turn your fleet you have to borrow money, and borrowing money is just hard to do these days,” Kilduff said. “They’ll hold onto the cars longer. They’re not going to turn them as fast as they did in the past.” 20 Monday, October 27, 2008 Business Travel News ERIC WONG http://www.btnonline.com/perdiem http://www.BTNonline.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Business Travel News October 27, 2008

Business Travel News- October 27, 2008
Contents
Inside Track
Profiles In Travel Management
BTN Research
Forum
Lodging
Travel Management Tech
Destinations
Washington Wire

Business Travel News October 27, 2008