Bankruptcy-threatened travel agencies to launch campaign

Latin American travel agencies agreed to hurl an aggressive promotional blitz of their services in an effort to thwart slashed commission fees paid by airlines that threaten to make thousands of companies in the sector go belly up.

Tourist enterprises decided to map out campaigns in the news media that highlight the advantages of their services. Many of these companies risk to vanish following a cutback in commission fees paid by airlines over the sale of plane tickets.

“We can’t expect more and the effort must be immediate, based on a promotional scheme to try to claw back the lost ground. Travel agencies cannot and should not disappear,” Enzo Furnari, chairman of the Confederation of Latin American Tourist Organizations (COTAL) told members of the press at the end of the organization’s congress held in Panama where this topic became a hot issue.

Mr. Furnari indicated the campaign will go hand in hand with additional efforts conducted by the travel agencies themselves with a view to negotiate commission terms with airlines or, in the worst-case scenario, to talk governments into going to bat for the disputing agencies.

Commission cuts started out on the heels of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States. In the face of plummeting revenues, aviation companies hacked off fees defrayed to tour operators in average figures that vary in keeping with each and every country.

As the COTAL Chairman puts it, around 60 percent of tourist companies are scrambling to put their heads above the water since most of their business operations revolve around commission fees off the sale of plane tickets.

Mr. Furnari admitted the new trends in the leisure industry are driving companies in the sector to rethink their strategies in order to get by in a highly competitive market. “Everything counts now and travel agencies must come together to go stronger and stay alive,” he concluded.