YTB Travel Network CEO Kim Sorensen confirmed that the multimillion-dollar travel company was among the firms canceled earlier this month by IATA for violating accreditation standards.

IATA earlier this month disclosed that it was canceling four U.S. agencies, saying the agencies had engaged in "improper lending, subcontracting or hiring to a third party of an IATA numeric code by agencies."

Sorensen said IATA had accused his agency of lending the numeric code to "third parties," meaning the company's independent contractors, which are called referring travel agents, or RTAs, in the YTB business model.

Making the number available to contractors is "the same as what any host agency has done," he said.

Sorensen declined to go into the matter further while YTB, through its attorneys, is trying to resolve the "very fixable" dispute.

"We take [IATA's] standards very seriously and are working ... to guarantee that we meet or exceed both IATA's regulations and our own high standards," Sorensen said in a statement.

At the same time, Sorensen added that "the ability of YTB or its RTAs to sell travel and be paid commissions ... will not be affected in any way." Sorensen explained that YTB does not use its IATA code to book air; it uses consolidators. Instead, the effect is to take away access to IATA products and services for YTB affiliates.

YTB referring agents can no longer book Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. brands through YTB in the wake of the cruise company's announcement last month that it would stop doing business with what it termed "card mills." Perillo Tours also has stopped taking bookings from YTB.

'We'll show them'

Meanwhile, YTB staged a one-day Carnival Cruise Lines sale earlier this month. Sorensen said YTB booked 12,000-plus passengers during the sale, beating its goal by 2,000 passengers. In e-mails to Travel Weekly, individuals who identified themselves as YTB agents characterized the sale as a "show RCCL" event.

"YTB did this one-day sale to show RCCL how many cruises this 'card mill' will not book on RCCL," one wrote. "We are a force to be reckoned with."

The writers would not consent to being quoted by name. Sorensen, however, said that although the sale day was a response to the RCCL move, it truly was about giving RTAs "a positive experience to focus on positive action" rather than negative news.

To rally RTAs for the selling event, YTB tossed out a "fun challenge" to attempt to sell more for Carnival on the sale day than RCCL would sell in the same day, said Sorensen. In reality, Sorensen said YTB had "no idea what RCCL does in a day, and it could care less if we sold more."

Carnival told Travel Weekly it would work with any agency to support a special sale day, up to four times a year, and this was the third such sale with YTB this year.

Vicki Freed, Carnival's senior vice president of sales and marketing, said the line offered YTB a two-category upgrade for each booking during the event.

As for selling RCCL, Sorensen said YTB tells the RTAs that it cannot sell RCCL and that the cruise company's products are no longer in the YTB booking system. However, he acknowledged that affiliates can make their own decisions.

"They can leave and go where they want," Sorensen said. "We will probably lose some people because of this."

Sorensen also said that YTB management told RTAs that if RCCL changed its mind, "we're not interested."

He said consolidators have offered to deliver RCCL by the back door, but that they weren't going to do that.   

To contact the reporter who wrote this article, send e-mail to Nadine Godwin at ngodwin@travelweekly.com.