旅游生意:中间商难以出局

AIRLINES are wonderful generators of profit-for everyone except themselves. Even in good times their margins are as thin as a boarding pass, and in recent years they have more often lost money (see chart). Averaged over the past four decades, the net profit margin of the world's airlines, taken together, has been a measly 0.1%. By contrast, other bits of the travel business that depend on the airlines-such as aircraft-makers, travel agents, airports, caterers and maintenance firms-have done very nicely.

航空公司的生意带来大量的利润，但自己却所赚无几。即使在经济繁荣的时期，他们的利润空间也少得可怜。近几年来，航空公司常常亏本（见图表）。过去的四十年中，把全球航空公司算在一起，平均的总净利润率只有极其微薄的0.1％。相比之下，其他依赖航空公司生存的旅游业务却表现突出，如飞机制造商，旅行社，机场，餐饮业和负责维修的公司等。

Some of the tastiest margins in the travel business are enjoyed by the "global distribution systems" (GDSs), a fancy name for computerised-reservations services. These were originally created by several of the largest airlines to distribute their flights through travel agencies but have since become independent firms. Most flights booked through a physical or online travel agent go through a GDS, which charges the airline a fee of about $12 per round trip, passing a few dollars of that to the travel agent. According to Take Travel Forward, an airlines' lobby group, the world's carriers pay $7 billion in GDS fees a year-more than double their expected net profits this year of $3 billion.

旅游生意里最丰厚的利润被"全球分销系统"（简称GDS）所独享。全球分销系统是电脑预定服务，它原本由几家大型航空公司组建以通过旅行社来销售班机票务，但现已成为独立的公司。大多数的航班是由实体或网上旅行社通过全球分销系统所预定，一次往返行程要收取航空公司12美元的费用，其中要分几美元给旅行社。据航空公司的游说团体"Take Travel Forward"表示，全球的航空公司每年要付70亿美元给GDS, 这是他们期待今年达到30亿美元纯利润的一倍多。

The airlines' chronic unprofitability is partly the result of a wave of competition-especially from new low-cost carriers-unleashed by the steady deregulation of aviation since the 1970s. But it is also due to two moves by the airlines, from the 1990s onwards, that in retrospect were strategic errors. One was to stop paying direct commissions to travel agents. The other was to set the reservation systems free to become (as the airlines see it) profit-gobbling monsters that devour their parents.

长期以来，航空公司盈利少的部分原因是自20世纪70年代起取消航空规范管理所竞争的结果，尤其是来自新成立的低成本航空公司的压力。但从20世纪90年代起，航空公司自己的两大战略错误也恶化了这一局面。其一是停止直接支付佣金给旅行社，其二使预订系统免费（如航空公司认为的）使其成为攫取利润的怪兽，正要吞噬它的衣食父母。

At the dawn of the internet age, airlines assumed that the middlemen who came between them and their passengers were headed for extinction. Travellers would eventually buy tickets either from the airlines' own websites or from price-comparison engines which hooked up directly to the airlines' computers over the web. So why pay commissions to agents? And why continue to own reservation systems, especially since regulators had stopped them from fiddling with travel agents' GDS screens to place their own flights at the top? So Lufthansa, Air France and Iberia sold most of their shares in Amadeus (the largest GDS); American Airlines sold Sabre; British Airways and KLM sold out of Galileo; and so on.

在互联网时代之初，航空公司认为他们和乘客之间的中间商即将出局。旅客们会从航空公司自己的网站上或从和航空公司计算机直接相连的价格比较引擎上直接购票。那么，为什么还要支付给代理商佣金呢？为什么还要继续拥有自己的预订系统，特别是由于监管机构已经禁止他们与旅行社协议将自家的航班放在GDS屏幕的最上方。因此，汉莎航空、法航和伊比利亚出售其拥有的艾玛迪斯（全球最大的分销系统）的股份；美国航空公司出售Sabre，英国航空公司和荷兰皇家航空出售Galileo等等。

However, the loss of direct commission from airlines made travel agents more beholden to the GDSs, which not only slip them a share of fees but also provide their back-office computing. Many online travel agencies have come to resemble physical ones, signing up with a GDS which provides a reservations system and other computing power while handing them a commission (ultimately paid by the airlines) on every booking. Despite airlines' efforts to make travellers bypass agents and come to their own websites, less than half of flights are booked this way.

旅行社失去了从航空公司获得的直接佣金，转而更加依赖全球分销系统，这不仅使他们失去了一部分的所得，同时还要提供后台计算。许多在线旅行社都像实体店一样，和GDS签署了协议，提供预约系统和其他电脑计算，同时每有一笔订单还要交付一部分佣金（最终由航空公司买单）。尽管航空公司努力使旅客绕过旅行社直接到他们的网站预订，但不足半数的航班票是采用这种方式预订的。

Some airlines have thrown in the towel and let a GDS take over the running of all their in-house systems for handling passengers-in some cases, even their websites. Bookings on BA.com, for example, are handled by Amadeus. Some low-cost carriers, such as easyJet, which had at first refused to use GDSs have relented. This is because they want to reach high-value business flyers, who often make bookings through corporate travel agents—which, in turn, use a GDS to compile their itineraries.

一些航空公司已经认输，让GDS接管其内部乘客系统的运行。在某些情况下，甚至还包括他们的网站。例如，在BA.com上的预订已由艾玛迪斯运行。一些低成本航空公司，如易捷航空，在最开始拒绝使用GDS系统，而现在已经动心了。这是因为他们想要拿到高价值的商业单，这些人往往通过企业代理旅行社预订，最为交换，易捷航空现在用GDS编写行程单。

Although there are some big emerging travel markets, such as Brazil and India, where the GDSs' grip is weaker, in others they have been successful in signing up new agents and airlines. China's government is nurturing a state-owned version, TravelSky. The middlemen the airlines wanted to do away with remain comfortably entrenched.

虽然，在一些大的新兴旅游市场，如巴西和印度，全球分销系统的控制力还较弱。在其他的国家，GDS已经成功地签了新的旅行社和航空公司。中国政府正在扶持一个国有的分销系统：民航（Travelsky）。航空公司希望剔除中间商的想法根深蒂固。

In recent years the main hope for restoring airline profitability has been ancillaries: all those extra charges for meals, checked bags, less-cramped seats and the like. The trouble is, carriers grumble, the GDSs' computer systems have struggled to cope with them, which makes it hard to flog such extras to passengers who book through agents. Like other airline chiefs, Qatar Airways' boss, Akbar Al Baker, complains of GDSs' slowness in updating their systems to cope with all these options, but he admits that they cannot do without the GDSs because they provide such a big share of their reservations.

近年来，航空公司一直视附加服务为盈利的最大希望：在餐点、托运行李、宽敞的座位上收取额外的费用等。航空公司抱怨道，问题是，全球分销系统的电脑系统却不能满足这些选择，这就使得想在通过旅行社订票的旅客身上收取额外的费用难上加难。和其他航空公司的老板一样，卡塔尔航空公司的老板贝克尔（Akbar Al Baker）先生抱怨全球分销系统更新缓慢，不能处理这些选项，但他也承认，他们离不了全球分销系统，因为它为公司提供的订单所占份额很大。

American Airlines, Air Canada and a few other carriers have tried to do so, by setting up a "direct connect" service, by which travel agents (physical or online) can bypass the GDSs and hook up to the airline's internal system to book both the basic flight and extras. To get any traction with this, the carriers are having to revert to paying agents commission-though less than they pay the GDSs. So far agents have mostly stuck with the GDSs: rebuilding their IT systems to make direct connections to airlines is expensive, and their contracts with GDSs may make it costly too.

美国航空、加拿大航空和其它一些航空公司已经尝试通过设立"直接连接"的服务，通过旅行社（实体店或网店）绕过全球分销系统，和该航空公司的内部系统相连，可以预定都基本航班和附加服务。为此，航空公司要重新支付佣金给旅行社—虽然这笔钱比付给GDS 的数额要少。但目前为止，代理商深陷全球分销系统之中：要重建他们的IT系统，和航空公司直接连接耗价巨大，但他们与全球分销系统所定的合同也价值不菲。

The search is on

搜索在继续

Hoping to solve these problems, the airlines' international association, IATA, is working on a grandly titled "new distribution capability". One of its main elements will be a common technical standard for direct-connect services. The GDSs could make use of such services, so as to sell the airlines' full range of extras as well as just flights. But perhaps of more interest to the airlines is that it would become easier for travel agents to build computer systems that deal directly with airlines. It would also become easier for search engines to scour the web for flights, assemble a list of options for travellers, then let them click through to the website of their chosen airline to complete the booking—again without a GDS's involvement.

为了解决这些问题，航空公司国际组织：国际航空运输协会, 正致力于一个名为"新分销能力"的宏大项目。它的主旨之一是为直接联系服务建立一个共同技术标准。全球分销系统也可以利用这些服务，从而为航空公司销售各类附加服务，或者仅仅只是提供订票服务。但，也许航空公司更感兴趣的是，它使得旅行社建立电脑系统和航空公司相连变得容易了许多。同时，也使得搜索引擎可以更加容易地搜索网页上的航班信息，形成列表提供给旅客，旅客们可以通过在网站上点击经它们筛选过的航班完成预定—在这过程中，没有GDS的参与。

Such a service is already offered by Google (which has bought ITA, an airline-software firm, and Frommer's, a guidebook publisher, as part of its push into the travel business). The airlines hope that common technical standards will also encourage the creation of lots of innovative new travel-search firms. Adam Wood, an analyst at Morgan Stanley, is sceptical: it would be hugely expensive for any new entrant to replicate the existing GDSs' heavy spending on technology: the need for such investment makes flight distribution a business that naturally tends towards an oligopoly, he reckons.

谷歌现已提供此类服务（Google购买了已经购买了航空软件公司ITA和指南出版商Frommer，作为进军旅游业务的一部分）。航空公司希望共同技术标准也将促进更多的新型旅行搜索公司的诞生。摩根士丹利的分析师亚当•伍德对此表示怀疑：任何新晋企业想要复制全球分销系统，都要在技术上投入大量资金。对投资的需求会使得航班分销生意趋于寡头垄断，他做出如上预测。

IATA hopes to have its new technical standards agreed by the end of the year-though as a rule, getting airlines to agree on such things is tricky. Then there would be the problem of implementation; the industry, like every other, has seen ambitious IT projects fail disastrously. Suppose that IATA does persuade hundreds of airlines to agree on the new technical standards, and successfully build computer systems that run on them. Even then, admits Gary Doernhoefer, an IATA official, the GDSs' grip on the industry may not change much without regulatory action to unpick their cosy agreements with travel agents.

国际航空运输协会希望今年底可以通过新的技术标准。尽管这是条规则，但想获得航空公司的同意却有些棘手。随后还要面临着实施这条规则的问题：航空行业和其他行业一样，都曾经历过大型IT项目惨败的结局。假设国际航空运输协会说服了数百家航空公司同意新的技术标准，并成功地建立了运行的电脑系统。即使这样，如若不消除航空公司和旅行社之间联系紧密的协议, 全球分销系统对整个行业的控制可能也不会发生太大的变化，国际航空运输协会官员加里承认道。

Regulators are indeed looking into the issue. An investigation into the GDSs by America's Department of Justice is quietly ticking over, and the European Commission is reviewing its code of conduct for them. Meanwhile, two of America's big carriers have taken GDSs to court over the tactics they use to maintain their hold over travel agents. American Airlines' case against Sabre is due to begin in a Texas state court in October. AA has also filed suits in federal courts against Sabre and Travelport (which owns Galileo and Worldspan and part-owns Orbitz, an online travel agency), as has US Airways against Sabre.

监管机构确实在调查这方面的问题。美国司法部正在调查全球分销系统，欧洲委员会也在审查他们的行为准则。同时，美国两大航空公司已经将GDS告上法庭，控告他们使用不正当手法控制旅行社。美国航空公司对Sabre的这场官司将于10月在得克萨斯州法开庭。美国航空还在联邦法院对Sabre和Travelport（拥有Galileo和Worldspan，和部分线上旅行社Orbitz的股份）提起诉讼，

The GDSs, meanwhile, are lobbying America's Department of Transportation to force airlines to include "core" extras (such as bag fees and check-in charges) in the fares they quote to the GDSs, to make for fairer comparisons with carriers that offer all-inclusive fares. Cory Garner, a senior executive at AA, says that in principle his airline is more than happy to provide such information, but its main worry is that the lobbying will prompt the government to lay down overly prescriptive rules on how it is provided. IATA and other airline associations fear a worse outcome: that they may be banned from offering any exclusive fares or promotions to agents which book directly rather than through a GDS. The department is expected to announce any rule changes in November.

与此同时，GDS游说美国运输部强制航空公司在给 GDS的费用中加上"核心"费用（如行李费和检查费），这可以更加公平地对比航空公司之间的完全报价。美国航空高级管理人员科里•加纳表示：原则上，他所在的航空公司很乐意提供这样的信息，但仍有疑虑，游说组织将促使政府下达过于规定性的条约：规定怎么提供这些方式。国际航空运输协会和航空公司担心更坏的结果：旅客直接订票而不是通过GDS来订票，它们可能会被禁止向代理结构提供任何额外的费用或者增额。运输部预计在11月份宣布变化的条规。

Both sides can claim to be the consumer's champion. The airlines argue that the cost of the middlemen adds to the price of tickets (though the superficial evidence suggests that it is airline shareholders who suffer). They say they want to reform the distribution system to offer flyers a wider choice and a more individually tailored service. The GDSs argue that they provide travellers, through their agents, with impartial comparisons of all available flights, allowing them to get the best value.

双方都宣称选择自己是消费者的胜利。航空公司认为，中间商的成本增加了机票的价格（虽然从表面上看吃亏的是航空公司的股东）。他们表示想要改革分配制度，给旅客提供更广泛的选择和更个性化的服务。GDS表示通过他们的代理人，提供给旅客所有航班的之间公平的比较，使得旅客能够获得最好的价值。

Svend Leirvaag, an executive at Amadeus, argues that it's a pity the airlines fixate so much on GDS fees, which at around 2% of their revenues are much less than the money the industry could save by fighting such things as ever-increasing travel taxes and the unfair subsidies that prop up some state-owned carriers. The airlines are lobbying for these things too, but they would still like to cut the cost of the middlemen.

艾玛迪斯的主管斯文拉瓦格（音译Leirvaag）表示很遗憾：航空公司总是盯着GDS费用不放，但是这些费用只占航空公司总收入的2%，它们可以通过减少不断增长的航空税和不不公平的补贴来节省钱，这都比给GDS的钱要多得多。那些不公平的补贴支持了一些国有的航空公司。航空公司也在为这些而游说，但是他们仍然专注于减少在中间商身上的开销。