ARTA Canada president and CEO Bruce Bishins died on Wednesday, his 62nd birthday, a year after suffering a stroke, according to the association.
In a posting on its website, ARTA Canada wrote that Bishins "was a brilliant business person and an unstoppable advocate for small and medium travel agencies in Canada," and described him as "formidable" and even "feared" in industry circles.
A vocal supporter of the airline direct-connect distribution model, Bishins broke with others in the agency community.
In a guest post for The Beat (a sister publication to Travel Weekly) in 2011, he wrote that he "cannot support" government action that forces the industry to adopt business practices, "which, in the name of 'transparency' and 'comparativeness,' is itself a ruse to maintain or exact better financial standing for only one party—in our case, GDSs and their outdated, excessively costly technology."
Bishins, who also served as managing director for ARTA in the United States, is credited with launching search portal Fare Spider and the agent-owned Genesis GDS.
He also began the Airline Training Council to educate travel agents. His career included stints at Trans World Airlines and the Air Transport Association, as well as participation on various corporate boards.
Source: Business Travel News