IATA agent members vexed
An air of dismay surrounds travel agents today owing to lack of support from IATA that has left them grappling for refunds. Agents, especially the smaller ones, across India are in a dilemma over renewing their IATA membership at all. Has IATA been reduced to just a name and logo?
I think agents have a valid point if they feel like giving up their IATA certification as no assistance is being given to IATA members and it is only extended to the airlines. Airlines should be penalised instead. Also, they have been increasing the membership fee yearly. In these times, IATA should at least help the travel agent to get refunds processed. If they cannot protect our money, what is the use of getting an IATA recognition?
Increasingly, the relevance of IATA is becoming less for the travel trade. The kind of umbrella protection that IATA is supposed to provide to a legitimate agent is instead loaded in favour of airlines in practice. Whenever there has been a default on the part of an agent to IATA, in 80-90 per cent of the cases, the money has been recovered. But, we have seen almost 30 airlines going bankrupt in the last 30 years, and the agents had to take the brunt of losing money.
The travel agent is spending around 60,000 pa for IATA. With so much money that agents give them, it is the responsibility of IATA to give services or some remuneration, which is not happening. It is time IATA understands that the agents have to be remunerated for the services being rendered by them for airlines. Travellers would depend on intermediaries who are answerable to customers and the airlines, and we are making that shift.
Our money is stuck and they have created this notion that it is a credit shell, wherein IATA has not played any positive role for travel agents. In J&K alone, certain travel agents have said that they don’t want to continue with IATA because their concerns have not been addressed. The rates we get on IATA GDS are higher than what is given to consolidators. IATA is only for the purpose of a logo. They should have restricted airlines to not issue stock or cabin facility with non-IATA agents.
IATA was always for airlines and never for the agents. On an average, an agent pays around ` 70,000-1,00,000 annually as fee for IATA. Without paying all that, they can get a ticket from a consolidator. However, during COVID, agents are worried because consolidators have not been able to pay the money either since they have not received it. Airlines are refunding money in credit shells that can only be used to issue more tickets.
Wipro’s webinar on building a resilient future for travel agencies focused on how they should draw up a blueprint to bring about their digital transformation.
It’s very easy for a techsavvy person to say that technology is available – you just have to take it, it’s so easy. It’s not! For someone who doesn’t know or understand technology, using it requires learning. And to take that first step, travel agents need help. We work more on relationships in the travel industry in India. To transition to using technology will require time and effort. It’s also a factor of cost and choosing the right product for the agent. But now is the time to adapt because we will be starting from ground zero.
I believe that there is no behavioural change that is required in a customer. And that is because it has already happened. There is a lot of technology available but you have to be creative in using it. Just look around you; there is so much innovation happening in everyday life. In future, you will have many different solutions similar to what you have in the iOS environment. You will have Apps that will be suitable for some travel agencies and not others. This isn’t a time for optimisation but looking at a new way of doing things.
Technology can be intimidating but it is totally worth it. One thing that agencies should look at is service design. Reimagine how a service is rendered into the world and what is needed to interact with the customer as well as at the back-end. This pandemic has put into perspective how services need to run. It’s no longer enough to give information. Agents need to ask what is the value proposition they bring to the client; how can they use their professional relationship to connect a chain of service for clients.