Mark Pestronk
Forty years ago, Michele McDonald, a Travel Weekly editor at the time, asked me to write a regular column about legal matters in the travel industry. Little did I know that I would begin a partnership with Travel Weekly that has lasted for more than half of my life.
On Monday, Oct. 28, 1985, Travel Weekly published my first column. You can't find it online, but I saved a photocopy and had it framed. Under the headline "Inplants, Outplants and Eggplants," it dealt with a hot topic at the time: the different types of places where ARC allowed (or didn't allow) a travel agency to have a location and issue airline tickets, which had to be on multipage, carbon-backed paper.
That topic is a reminder of how restrictive the rules were in those days, when the airlines were obsessed with knowing where and by whom their tickets were being sold. Since the retail business consisted mainly of selling airline tickets, agencies were in turn rather obsessed with ARC.
In turn, the federal government was still in the business of closely following how travel agencies were regulated, ensuring that the airlines didn't violate the antitrust laws by exerting too much control over commissions and travel agency operations. Lawyers could make a living just by being experts in all these air transportation-related matters.
So much has changed in 40 years. Travel Weekly's staff has done a great job covering the main changes, most recently in the special report called "25 years that changed travel."
From my perch, the biggest developments of the past four decades have been the shift toward sales of cruises, all-inclusives and tours and away from airline tickets; the growing importance of technology contracts; and the explosion of independent contractors and their host agencies.
The enormous increase in self-employed sellers has been a boon for the lawyers who represent them or their hosts. The many varied legal matters I handle for host agencies have become a large part of my practice.
At one time, it was commonly thought that agencies that had ICs were worth less than agencies that had employees, as ICs were fickle and could leave with their clients at any time. Now we know that the reverse is true, with enormous private equity investments in very large host agencies.
Many of the old-timers who entered the retail business before the turn of the century want to cut back or retire, and I am advising more owners in mergers and acquisitions than I ever thought I would. Even the smallest successful businesses have value, so those entrepreneurs shouldn't be closing up without looking to sell.
I, on the other hand, am definitely not retiring, either as a lawyer or Travel Weekly columnist. I enjoy the legal challenges, interesting problems and engaging personalities of my clients. One secret I have discovered is that I can travel wherever on Earth I want while still practicing law, so as long as I can combine my two passions this way, I will.