Last week I wrote an article on whether Travel Agents should start charging fees. And judging by all the responses it sparked, this controversial question has hit a nerve with agents across the country.
Sparking debate on this issue was exactly my intention in writing the article, and so it was great to see such an awesome range of responses from KarryOn readers.
As you can see below, the Facebook post received over 100 likes (263 likes on our webpage), tons of shares, and over 40 comments at last count! It was definitely one of the most popular posts of that week, which says that this is an issue plenty of agents feel strongly about.
Some of these insightful or damn right entertaining comments were so brilliant we thought it’d be worth highlighting some of them to (a) shine some KarryOn love on the commenter, and (b) bring all of our readers up to speed on where the debate is heading and how the industry is positioning itself in response to the controversial issue.
But in case you missed the first article, you can read it here.
Okay, so back to the responses. Perhaps unsurprisingly the vast, vast, VAST majority of responses sided with Travel Agents charging fees for their services – just like other professionals do in other industries.
This user summed it up pretty nicely when she said…
And this user makes it very easy to understand…
Fees for service – nothing shady about that, right? After all, the fee could then come off the total, making it more like an investment and a source of security that the person won’t walk off with your customised itinerary and book somewhere else.
Even non-Travel Agents could see how much it makes sense:
But not all…
But even out of those that do get it, not everyone agrees on imposing a blanket fee across the board.
One former agent and now a lawyer in training put forward the argument that not all Travel Agents are experts, and therefore charging customers fees as a matter of standard practice may short change some customers…
And she wasn’t alone in this opinion, with the comment attracting a considerable amount of likes.
The argument here is that non-expert Travel Agents will tarnish the reputation of legitimate agents with the expertise and experience to back it up. A customer being charged a fee without the experience to back it up (ahem, newbies) simply wouldn’t be fair, right?
But then, KarryOn contributor and industry veteran, Mark Luckey, made an excellent point when he said that most agents get referrals by the quality of their service, such that sub-par service would result in no referrals. This would mean that only awesome Travel Agents would get the clients and then be in a position to charge a fee accordingly:
But even if it hasn’t become the industry standard, some Travel Agents are choosing to impose their own non-refundable fees on certain clients they feel may run away to another agent – or online – in pursuit of a slightly cheaper holiday, despite the original agent doing all the heavy lifting.
Such as Sky Gander:
And other agents have been charging fees for some time now, and the responses they’ve been receiving have been very encouraging:
I guess in the meantime we need to keep the debate moving along and hopefully come to some consensus on the best way forward for the industry to prosper and keep all you awesome Travel Agents happy!
