2013年公共英语一级考试口语指导（3）
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。