Indian agents protest against airlines
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The travel agents in India have decided to voluntarily shut shops on 7 May 2013 (tomorrow) to protest against scheduled domestic and international airlines.
The move to down shutter’s, comes after the Ministry of Civil Aviation’s (MoCA) announced to permit domestic and international airlines to unbundled certain services and to charge fees for the same separately. The services that can be unbundled separately are preferential seating, meal/snack/drink charges (except drinking water), charge for using airline’s lounges, check-in baggage charges, sports equipment charges, musical instrument carriage, fee for special declaration of valuable baggage. According to the PIB release, the list will be reviewed after a period of six months.
Speaking to Travel Daily India, Iqbal Mulla, president of Travel Agents Association of India (TAAI) said, “We have not called for a strike or a bandh. The Managing Committee and Chapter Chairpersons of TAAI – a total of 33 people – have taken a call of conscience and decided that we will shut our shops on 7 May as a mark of protest. We have been surprised by the overwhelming support, close to 1,000 agents from across the country have sent in messages of their support and voluntarily decided to also down their shutters as a mark of solidarity.”
Citing similar opinion, Ajay Prakash, immediate past president of Travel Agents Federation of India (TAFI) said, “No one likes to close shop and lose business, but the government and more importantly, the consumers need to realise the value of travel agents. We provide a single window for comparison shopping, we provide professional guidance and we are there for our passengers when things go wrong – like during strikes or natural calamities. Would you prefer to hold on to an airline phone line which says “Your call is important to us” for half an hour, or would you be better off calling your travel agent? If airline policies and governmental apathy drive travel agents out of business, my sympathies to the travelling public since neither the airlines nor the online travel portals can provide even a fraction of the service that a traditional agent provides to a loyal clientele.”
The agent community has asked complete transparency to be maintained in the airfare, regulate the airfare, and consolidate airfare to be charged with all basic essential necessities of the consumer and to avoid double taxation by the airlines to the consumer.
Over the last few years, the travel agents in India have worked with reducing commissions, prohibition on the levy of transaction fee and the weekly settlement which will get effective from 1 July.