Originally Posted by
Sharratt4
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As a related aside, I do wonder whether some creative thinking could help both BA and its passengers... surely they could do a deal with a large travel agency for a dedicated hotline for booking accommodation in IROPS. That way the passengers can just be given a number to call to be looked after and would feel better about BA and not have to worry navigating London accommodation options and BA can always be sure that they are giving people the cheapest acceptable room available at the time. They could even do some kind of arrangement where you provide your booking reference and someone in a back office checks they were really IRROP'd after the event, anyone trying to pull a fast one could then be sent the bill.
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I think anyone who has spent time with senior level people in a big organisation knows that "do the profitable thing" outranks "do the right thing by our customer" 99.999% of the time.
No doubt some shiny young grads at Waterside will have crunched the numbers and concluded that the (very real and present) cost of establishing such customer-friendly functions, processes and systems
far outweighs the expected (future avoided) costs of compensation, reimbursement, poor hotel rates, reputational damage and potential loss of revenue.
I have seen projects which would return multi-millions annually not getting the green light because something else has a better payback, so things to help the customer which don't help cashflow or profitability struggle to even make it onto the list for discussion...