You will look in vain in law school course descriptions for a specialty called "travel law." There is such a thing, of course, but its full-time practitioners are so few that they can rattle off each others' names in a matter of seconds.
One of those names is Mark Pestronk, whose career took a new turn on Oct. 25, 1985,when he began writing a travel law column for Travel Weekly. He has been regularly appearing in these pages for 25 years, becoming in the process our longest-serving outside contributor.
Pestronk's first "Observer" column ran under the headline "Inplants, outplants and eggplants." It addressed the confusing and overlapping terms that had sprung up in the industry to describe agency relationships with ARC and corporate accounts. Since then, his topics have ranged from liability to landlord-tenant relations to the arcane world of GDS contracts -- always from the perspective of the travel agent.
Pestronk's career in travel began in law school when he landed a part-time job with a little-known and now extinct government agency called the Civil Aeronautics Board. After law school, that line on his resume helped get him an interview, and a job, with a small Washington law firm that represented a few airlines and tour operators.
In 1980, after five years, Pestronk decided to strike out on his own, taking a few small clients with him, mostly travel agencies and consortia, including an agency group called TTI, the precursor to Radius. His practice has been almost exclusively travel-related since then.
In 1991, Pestronk took a brief break from the daily grind to become a contestant on the TV quiz show "Jeopardy" and is listed as one of the top winners in the show's seventh season, with $51,698. His biggest flub: he blanked on the title of Elvis Presley's hit "Don't Be Cruel."
Below, Pestronk looks back at 25 years of informing and advising Travel Weekly's readers. -- Ed.
The highest compliments readers pay me are "You really understand the business," and "Your advice is practical and useful, not unrealistic or impractical." To which I reply, "Thanks, but it is really a bunch of bright clients who have taught me what is important in travel law."
By "travel law," I mean the laws governing relationships and transactions between travel agencies on the one hand, and travel suppliers, clients, or government agencies on the other. My clients are absorbed by the travel business, and I enjoy being absorbed by travel law.
Three travel-law-related areas that have been very important to clients are GDS deals; mergers and acquisitions; and agency-airline-ARC-related matters. It is no coincidence that these are the three topics that I have written about most throughout the last 25 years, the first seven as one of the "Observer" columnists and the last 18 as the exclusive "Legal Briefs" columnist.
I started writing columns for Travel Weekly in 1985. That was also the year that GDS vendors began paying agencies to use their systems. Twenty-five years later, I am still writing, and the vendors are still paying -- both remarkable achievements that no one could have predicted.
More than 100 of my columns have advised agencies about issues related to GDS contracts, focusing on the business as well as the legal terms. For larger agencies, their GDS agreements are the most important contract they sign -- the most trap-filled contract for the unwary and the biggest source of revenue from a single supplier.
By exposing and publicizing oppressive contract terms and advising agencies how to work around them, I have had at least some role in getting the vendors to make their contracts more agency-friendly. For example, of the 10 contractual traps that I covered in an April 1990 column, six are no longer to be found in any GDS contract, including cross-default clauses, inadvertent renewal by adding equipment, overlapping terms, minimum-use clauses and the vendor's right to terminate at will.
My readers have also found out how to ask for the best GDS deals and how to get them. I have consistently covered this topic, and I am proud that I might have helped agencies obtain substantial incentives that they would not have received if I had not alerted them to what was obtainable.
At the same time, it is humbling to realize that I have been consistently wrong in my predictions that "the window of opportunity is closing" and that GDS deals will not be as favorable in a few years as they are now. I expressed this view on no less than three occasions, yet GDS deals are better than ever for agencies with large numbers of segments.
Agency mergers and acquisitions have been another frequent and favorite topic for me, with nearly 70 columns devoted to the subject. As a result of representing buyers or sellers in more than 400 transactions over the years, I have been able to impart practical advice on agency evaluations, payment terms and formulas, noncompetes and transaction structuring to minimize liability and save taxes.
My most-referred-to columns have been those that contained my evaluation formulas and descriptions of the factors that buyers take into account when deciding how much to pay for an agency. Potential sellers have valued my columns that provide advice on how to increase the worth of an agency prior to a sale.
Perhaps the best acquisition advice I have given is how to avoid disappointment after the deal is done by being careful and thorough beforehand. I have observed that most mergers and acquisitions do not go smoothly, so I have tried to explain why it is important to do your homework and be realistic if you buy or sell an agency.
In 1992, 1996, and 1998, I wrote columns explaining why it was "a good time to sell your agency" and leave the business. If you are reading this column, you obviously did not heed my advice, for which I thank you!
In about 100 columns over the years, I have written about how agencies can try to defend themselves against the war that the major airlines -- and their stalking horse, ARC -- have been waging against travel retailers since at least the first commission caps were imposed in 1995. Readers have no doubt whose side I have fought on.
Unfortunately, many problems that I wrote about in the 1980s, including the unfairness of credit card chargebacks and the inability of agencies to defend against many unfair debit memos, are still with us. Worse, ARC has invented new ways to pin liability on agencies and force them to pay.
The relationship between agencies and airlines continues to cry out for reform, and I can only hope that future columns will make a contribution to that reform.
Click here for an archive of Mark Pestronk's Legal Briefs column.