A survey by the Business Travel Coalition (BTC) revealed that corporate travel managers are studying the use of air ticket consolidators. BTC indicated that it is not unusual for a $10,000 fare, available via a corporate travel program, to be offered by a consolidator for $5,000.

About 33 percent of respondents to the survey of corporate travel buyers BTC fielded this week, said there is increased interest among their travelers in using ticket consolidators, though only 10 percent said they currently use consolidators. An additional 13 percent are considering their use. The small population of consolidator adopters said they use such purchasing options sparingly; no more than 10 percent of the time.

Some 37.5 percent of participants who use consolidators report net savings of under 20 percent from negotiated fares while another 37.5 percent reported savings of 21 percent to 30 percent. Nearly 63 percent of the respondents said the use of fare consolidators, who buy wholesale airline tickets and sell them at a reduced rate, could reduce travel spend.

However, according to BTC Chair Kevin Mitchell, their use remains minimal and adoption does not come without some travel management pitfalls. Still, their usage also can trip up some fundamentals of a managed travel program. According to the survey, nearly 93 percent of respondents said tracking travelers who purchase such fares is difficult and about 83 percent said such tickets are largely nonrefundable, potentially diminishing any savings from a booking not followed by a trip. Further potential drawbacks to using such offerings, the survey shows, include eroding the value of a managed travel program, shifting bookings from preferred suppliers and making it difficult to capture usage in data travel management streams.  Travel managers, said BTC, can spend considerable time investigating the efficacy of using consolidators, and in turn, responding to travelers and senior management teams can be time-consuming, and not without some risk if the analysis is not thorough and credible.

Even so, the nine-page report showed 37.3 percent of survey participants have noticed increased interest regarding consolidators from among their travelers. It also said that 27.8 percent of those using consolidators are purchasing first class tickets, 77.8 percent business class and 61.1 percent economy class.

“In these hard economic times we can expect, and are indeed seeing, employees looking outside managed travel programs for lower priced air tickets,” said Mitchell. “In particular, those employees authorized to travel business and first class are often actively looking at consolidator fares, spurred on in some cases by favorable press reports.”

BTC conducted the first-of-its-kind survey of 152 corporate travel managers (CTMs) from 13 countries regarding the use and efficacy of air ticket consolidators in managed travel programs. The survey was conducted in response to increased interest among travelers and CTMs. The purpose of this survey was to provide a analysis including global best-practice regarding the use of consolidators; the current level of use of consolidators in corporate managed travel programs; the benefits of using consolidators; the risks; and, where consolidators are being used by CTMs, how are they being integrated within the travel program.