Wide-ranging protests by German travel agents and corporate customers have failed to stop Lufthansa from introducing its controversial €16 GDS booking charge this week but many are now threatening to switch bookings to other airlines instead.

Since Tuesday (September 1) all bookings for flights on Lufthansa, Austrian, Swiss and Brussels Airlines (but not Germanwings or Eurowings) made through one of the GDS systems such as Amadeus cost an additional €16 fee while fares for direct bookings have been left unchanged. Lufthansa says the new Distribution Cost Charge (DCC) is necessary to compensate for the high costs of GDS bookings but at the same time it also wants to use the price difference to drive passengers towards more online bookings directly from its website.

In response, many German travel agents are threatening to book with other airlines as much as possible. Agency consortium Aerticket, an important sales partner for many airlines, claimed that the special Lufthansa ‘Agents Site’, created for direct bookings, prevented agents from comparing Lufthansa prices with other carriers, forced them to make all booking changes via a Lufthansa call centre, and effectively handed over customer data to the airline.

The German Travel Association (DRV) warned that the fee would put up ticket prices, given that about 70% of all Lufthansa bookings are made through a GDS, reduce price transparency for customers and increase agents’ workload substantially. It has called on the German cartel authority to investigate possible discrimination against external sales partners. The European travel agents association ECTAA has complained to the European Commission about the charge.