Airline alliances are increasingly motivated by their members to secure lucrative contracts with corporates.

oneworld is alone in having a corporate sales department with offices in Dallas and Vancouver.

oneworld vice-president commercial, Mr Nicolas Ferri, told BTN Asia-Pacific: “We see more and more customers requesting alliance responses to tenders as opposed to single airline responses.”

oneworld is not designed to substitute individual member carriers’ dealings with corporate accounts, but the corporate sales team is tasked with supporting those efforts and to providing a central point of contact and tracking to support alliance corporate contracts.

For competitive reasons, the alliance is reluctant to publicise the terms of its contracts with corporate accounts.

“I can tell you alliance revenues are steadily growing in the order of 20 per cent year-over-year and amounted to approximately US$600 million in 2004, of which approximately US$325 million was incremental, that is not otherwise generated if it wasn’t for oneworld.

“Yields also defy industry trends, with yields generated by alliance dealings also on the rise,” Mr Ferri said.

He added oneworld did not only work with the biggest corporates. “More than size, we look for the customers’ ability to implement and execute a consistent travel policy. We look for multiple points of sale and for business that is relevant to at least three or more of our member airlines.” In addition, it discusses potential business opportunities with corporate accounts that, while complying with some of these requirements, may be more local in nature than global.

Mr Ferri said: “A perfect example of this ‘local’ policy is our successful businessflyer product available in Germany and France. With this product we are able to offer negotiated fares at significant savings to small and medium enterprises who would otherwise not be able to benefit from these rates.

“Again, it is all about responding – and being proactive – to specific market needs.”

Competitor Star Alliance claims to be the leading global airline alliance for the high-value international traveller and told BTN Asia-Pacific it was keen to develop the market.

It has a programme called Corporate Plus, through which corporations or their travel management firms can contact any Star Alliance member carrier to devise a plan that takes advantage of the alliance’s collective network and service benefits and allows them to book and manage corporate travel seamlessly.

Star said in a statement: “Part of the great flexibility of Corporate Plus is a qualified corporation is in the position to work with the Star Alliance member airline of their choice in order to work on a Corporate Plus agreement.”

The corporate agreement also offers the ability to earn and redeem frequent flyer miles or points on member airlines, flexible fare structures and prices and priority for Gold members in reservations, baggage and check-in, standby and boarding procedures.

Last December, Star claimed to have consolidated and signed 35 global agreements with companies doing E1.5 billion (US$1.8 billion) in business with its members and “the numbers have increased significantly since”.