ASTA continues to respond to an article on WomansDay.com that was critical of travel agents.
ASTA CEO Zane Kerby said that because agents typically do not have large marketing budgets, they rely on reputation and work “exceptionally hard” to earn it.
“The inaccuracies in the WomansDay.com article are damaging to an industry that provides an invaluable service: helping us all see the world,” he said.
Kerby also praised Woman’s Day for responding immediately to ASTA.
“After reading our response, which included the article as they should have written it, Woman's Day’s senior editor reached out to us to work on future stories that will showcase travel agents’ value. Given the opportunity, we plan to make lemonade out of this lemon,” said John Pittman, ASTA's vice president of industry and consumer affairs.
Paul Ruden, ASTA’s senior vice president of legal and industry affairs, went through the article to set inaccuracies straight.
He said that commissions are going down and because of “ferocious competition.”
Ruden said, “No agent can survive long by giving bad advice to earn a few extra bucks on a sale,” as the article said some agents might do.
In response to the article’s assertion that agents can’t book or price all airlines, Ruden wrote that this part of the article is “especially fraught with errors.”
“Any travel agent that still sells air travel (not all do, just like not all retailers sell every brand of anything) can sell any airline’s services, including Southwest's,” Ruden said.
Ruden said that, like many retailers, agents have not used every product they sell. However, he wrote that if “a travel agent were to lie about cruise or hotel amenities, they would quickly be out of the industry.”
He wrote that ASTA members agree to work in accordance with a code of ethics.
As to the article’s assertion that agents might not be flexible on departure dates and airports because it would hurt their commission, Ruden said that “since base commissions were abolished more than a decade ago (news!), agents generally charge straightforward fees for booking air tickets and have a legal and practical responsibility to protect their clients’ interests even above their own.”
The Woman's Day article also said that travel insurance might not be necessary.
“Health insurance may not be 'necessary' either, until you get sick. Agents recommend insurance to help protect the considerable investment that consumers make in committing to travel plans, especially where a complex vacation experience is at stake. Things can go wrong and neither the consumer, agent nor travel vendor can prevent them. So insurance often makes sense and in many cases it avoids huge losses for the consumer. Railing at agents about recommending travel insurance is just plain silly,” wrote Ruden.
The article implied that online agencied have better refund and cancellation policies. Ruden said that agents provide refunds in keeping with travel vendor policies and government regulations.
“This is at best a neutral in the choice between online and offline buying. The fact that refunds may be available through online sites doesn’t mean anything about traditional agents. The choice of channel simply should be based on other considerations if both are equal on refunds,” Ruden wrote.
He also pointed out that the article’s assertion that travel agents won’t necessarily find the best price failed to recognize that the best price is not always the best value.
“What a good travel agent will do is find the price and service combination that best meets the traveler’s needs and wants. If it’s only about price, everyone would just eat fast food, regardless of health concerns. This is silly,” Ruden wrote in his analysis.
Follow Kate Rice on Twitter @krtravelweekly.