Outsourcing: nothing to fear but fear itself?
Deregulation
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Rail BSP – myth or reality?
When talking to railway companies and travel agencies about rail distribution in Europe, one topic always comes back in the discussion: “there is no rail BSP”.
Let’s go back to the basics first and try to understand what BSP is and what it does for the airline world.
BSP – or Billing and Settlement Plan – is a system administered by IATA, the International Air transport Association, in order to facilitate the sales, remittance and reporting between airlines and IATA accredited travel agencies. Global, the BSP system covers more than 160 countries and territories, serving about 400 airlines for a gross sales amount of US$ 191 billion in 2009 - more on iata.org.
In addition to the guarantees it provides to airlines about agency accreditation, the true value of the BSP for airlines is a reliable credit management collection through one single standard interface for invoicing and payment.
There is actually one BSP-like system in the rail industry: ATOC Rail Settlement plan - it acts the same way as the IATA BSP for UK rail operators, simplifying the payment between railways and rail travel sellers in the UK. It also sets standards for booking and ticketing – more on atoc.org.
Could this be applied elsewhere then?
Well, ATOC works in the UK: one market, one currency, one set of standards for multiple providers. Extending this BSP system to Europe might be feasible but: who will be in charge of it? Who will run it? Who will participate in it?
A first option would be for railways to work together and create such a representative body like IATA, to neutrally represent their interests and build a Rail BSP. The biggest challenge to implement such a system remains the railways themselves and their willingness to cooperate. This is definitely a long-term approach that could take many years to come to life.
Another option would be for a third party to start such a system with one rail operator in one country, before expanding the system to other operators - this is a progressive approach, short to medium term, that could well be a helpful kick start in such a complex market place.
Yet, the question of “who” still remains – any candidates?
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Travelling by train across Europe
"Travelling long distance by train is no longer a niche" Mark Smith (founder of The Man in Seat Sixty-One www.seat61.com) presented some very interesting stats around destinations requested by travellers. From his website stats and customer queries he was able to build a top 10 favourite destinations of UK passengers.The most popular European pages of travelling from UK to somewhere are ...
1.Italy
2.France
3.Netherlands
4.Spain
5.Ireland
6.Germany
7.Switzerland
8.Russia
9.Turkey
10.Belgium
11.Austria
12.Greece
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Andrew Sharp (IARO Director General) at the Amadeus Rail Forum
I was pleased to be able to attend Amadeus’s Total Rail Passenger Forum in November. It was an excellent event with some good speakers and useful delegates – informative and good for networking even though it was hard work!The thing which really struck me, though, was the excellence of the organisation. I say this as someone who has both organised and spoken at similar events – and my experience has been mixed of late.At one recent conference, the scheduled start time was 9:00. My train was a bit late so I really rushed from the underground train to the registration desk – only to find that the event had been retimed to start at 9:45! And the end had been changed from 17:00 to 16:20. OK, it was partly my fault – I did get an email the day before confirming a 9:00 start and with an agenda which I didn’t look at as page 2.However, that tells me that at least three of their speakers had pulled out – and that they didn’t have a Plan B. At some – most – of my conferences, I have had delegates come up to me and say that they happened to have a presentation they could show if I had a spare slot. I have also been contacted by conference organisers a very few weeks ahead of an event and asked to speak. OK, I then knew that I wasn’t their first choice as a speaker, but I would usually do it if I could manage the date. These organisers didn’t have the foresight to deal with speakers dropping out – why?At another conference, the organisers had put together a number of panels –thinking that a panel discussion or two would break up the round of non-stop PowerPoint presentations. However, they had obviously not communicated their intentions to some of the participants. One in particular had come in with a full presentation. As the chairman (and only other member of that particular panel) started to discuss issues with her, she asked the IT technician for her PowerPoint file to be displayed, gave her presentation, and then was visibly disconcerted to find that she was expected to discuss the topic with the chairman rather than have a standard question and answer session.I'd be interested to know of any other events out there that people have been to that they could recommend around travel and the passenger, in the field of Air-Rail or Rail would be my preference.So well done the Amadeus team, who had planned and organised so effectively!I hope you enjoyed reading this: I look forward to your feedback.Andrew
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Philip Martin
Head of Marketing Amadeus Rail
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