ALEXANDRIA, Va. -- ASTA amended its Travel Agent Manual to specify
that individual travel agents have the right to make public
statements about their current booking practices, which could
include not selling particular suppliers.
Paul Ruden, ASTA staff senior vice president for industry
affairs, said the revision was made to Chapter 20 of the last
edition of the manual, which states agents have the right not to do
business with particular suppliers.
After conferring with outside counsel, Ruden said, ASTA decided
on "elaborating on that advice."
ASTA now is advising its members that "if a travel agency
decides to stop selling a particular supplier, the agency, when
acting unilaterally without agreement with competitors, may make a
public announcement of its current booking practices whenever the
announcement is reasonably designed to communicate with actual or
potential customers and /or actual or potential suppliers of the
agency."
"The announcement we are talking about has nothing to do with
any future plans, but about current booking practices that might
change at any moment," Ruden said.
Ruden stressed, however, that the agency will nevertheless have
to take great care in how and what they announce. He warned that
talking about future plans -- or encouraging other agencies or
consumers to follow their lead -- could open the agency to
anti-trust scrutiny.
"No one is to suggest that, in making a statement of their
current practice, that anybody should do anything in response to
that," Ruden said.
Ruden said ASTA decided to elaborate on the manual in response
to inquiries from its membership.
In other developments, ASTA said it is looking at ways to revamp
and update its World Congress as part of a wide-ranging enhancement
of the association. Product-focused seminars, an increased number
of workshops and agent roundtables are among the enhancements being
kicked around.
ASTA officials have made no secret that they were disappointed
with the attendance figures of the last ASTA conference in
Strasbourg, which drew some 1,500 agents, only slightly more than
the Congress in Glasgow.
"Do I believe the Strasbourg World Congress was the best one we
ever had? No. Do I think it can be improved? Yes," said ASTA
president Joe Galloway.
"One of things that is frustrating to some of us is we don't
have as much participation as we would like. So the question is if
they are not coming are we doing the right thing?"