Unity should prevail
With so many lessons learnt over the years, post COVID-19, it is of utmost importance that the Indian travel and tourism fraternity should unite and work together as one industry for a speedy recovery from the pandemic’s impact.
It has been an incredibly tough year as the COVID-19 pandemic has affected lives and livelihoods worldwide. The pandemic is still affecting the whole world and has temporarily brought India to a near standstill.
Since the first outbreak of coronavirus disease of 2019, more than 1 million people have lost their lives due to the pandemic. The global economy is expected to contract by a staggering 4.3 per cent in 2020. Millions of jobs have already been lost, millions of livelihoods are at risk, and an estimated additional 130 million people will be living in extreme poverty if the crisis persists.
In the Indian scenario, most travel trade offices remained closed, and some partially opened. Though, not yet fully functional, the travel trade must thank Hon. Supreme Court of India for the remarkable Judgment of making the air ticket refund possible for our valued passengers for flight cancelations. We should also appreciate the proactive steps taken by the Government of India and DGCA for the implementation of the Judgment in its true spirit.
According to media reports, the Ministry of Civil Aviation states that 74.3 per cent of passengers received full reimbursement on their tickets and accordingly, `3200 crores dispersed against 55,23,940 PNR cancellations. Simultaneously, as per the passengers’ option, airlines are holding 2,06,119 credit shells worth `219 crores, permissible to issue/re-issue before 31st March or 31st December 2021, depending on the policy of the carriers.
It was a victory of the travel agents fraternity who stood together to protect their customers’ interests and rights in getting refund amount over the cancelled tickets when airlines collectively refused. We at IAAI would like to express our sincere thanks to Advocate Jose Abraham who is the ‘Advocate on Record’ of the Supreme
Court of India and the President of Pravasi Legal Cell, for making IAAI implead in the case against airlines’ arbitrary decisions.
Thus, IAAI became the first travel trade association as a party in the writ petition before the Hon. Supreme Court of India regarding airline ticket refund issue, and afterward other associations followed IAAI. We are also thankful to Advocate Ajith Marath, our Advisory Member of ‘IAAI Passenger Rights Forum’ for his contributions to this cause. We further express our gratitude to every member agents, passengers, travel journals and other media for their wholehearted support for IAAI’s Nationwide Signature Campaign in this regard.
IAAI’s Nationwide Signature Campaign’s most significant success is that we could make our beloved travelling public understand the value and virtue of travel agencies during difficult times and understand how they legally protected by the provisions of India Government’s Passengers Charter of 2019. Again, repeatedly, it reminds us of a lesson that, if there were unity amongst the travel trade fraternity, airlines would not have dared to take such arbitrary decisions unilaterally.
Air travel is slowly picking up again worldwide after a challenging period of almost complete lockdown. That should not be a reason for airlines to slow down the refund payment of 26 per cent pending reimbursement. It is the hard-earned money of the travelling public, and IAAI requests Government authorities to take necessary steps to make the complete reimbursement before 31st March 2021 as directed by the Hon. Supreme Court of India.
There will almost certainly be a travel recovery early next year as our industry faced and survived similar challenges before, like the 9/11 attack, 2008 recession, SARS and NIPAH. Even though nobody can predict what will happen, one thing is sure that we will not be able to travel as freely as before. A new style of travel with masks, sanitizers, and social distancing is expected for the near future.
We at IAAI believe that learning from the experiences of the industry stakeholders will try to understand the value, virtue, and goodwill of unity within the Industry and work together for a speedy recovery of the travel and tourism industry from the present jeopardy in this New Year.