Jamie Biesiada
Travel advisors wear a lot of hats when doing their jobs, from sales to marketing to logistics. Once their client has traveled, though, advisors often need to shift into another job entirely: debt collector.
It's an all-too-common problem. For whatever reason -- sometimes it's malicious, often it's just a simple error -- it can be exceedingly difficult for advisors to collect the commissions owed to them on time. It's something I, and many others, have chronicled in the pages of Travel Weekly and beyond for years. Yet, it's still a problem.
"I find that when I deal with a supplier directly, they sometimes don't want to pay commission," said Ann Lewis, owner of Just Travel NYC in Baldwin, N.Y.
Lewis is the president of ASTA's Long Island chapter and the Society's regional director for the Northeast. She has a lot of visibility into what other advisors are experiencing, and she's not alone in dealing with these issues.
While commission-payment problems are few and far between with the larger suppliers, Lewis said most of her issues stem from small tour operators and destination management companies. They can be hard to vet, making it almost impossible to know if they'll pay commission.
Lewis has found a way around it that largely works for her. She often asks suppliers to give her a net rate, which she marks up for clients to ensure she's paid, but things would be better if all suppliers acted with goodwill toward advisors, she said. (And, as Lewis acknowledged, not every advisor can facilitate net rates; many host agencies, for instance, restrict or heavily regulate their use.)
"I would love to see a way that we can move forward with all of this," she said. "If I'm working and I'm sending you a client and you're getting paid, why aren't you paying me?"
For Lewis, hotels aren't as much of an issue when it comes to receiving commissions promptly, but she knows it is for other advisors. That similarly makes little sense to her: "Why are we waiting?"
"If I have to spend most of my days trying to collect commission and not work, that's a problem," she said.
ASTA is on the right track in asking members to report offending hotels, Lewis said.
When advisors report those bad actors, the Society steps in and begins a process to get the advisors paid. If the hotels don't pony up, ASTA puts them on a watchlist so members know who to avoid doing business with.
But as Lewis pointed out, it can be embarrassing for an advisor to openly admit they weren't paid. She has concerns that many bad actors are going unreported.
The plumbing of the travel industry is clearly backed up, and the repair won't be simple. So let's keep this conversation going.
Any fix will likely come as a combined result of efforts like ASTA's watchlist and third-party developers creating software like Sion to mitigate the problem. One of Lewis' tactics would also be helpful: forming long-term relationships with suppliers who have proven themselves trustworthy.
It's a problem that will likely never be 100% solved, but the industry can do better for the advisors who connect the traveling public with the world.