Category: Travel Agent

Travel agents struggle to stay open after ‘devastating’ pandemic year without bookings

Travel agent Karen Weber has only booked four new trips since the pandemic started last March. It’s the same number of employees she once had.

She knew there was no way to make that math work. So she shut down her New Hamburg, Ont., travel agency, southwest of Kitchener, in January.

“It’s not the way I intended to end my career,” she said. “I don’t see any travel for a while.”

Weber worked for 34 years in travel, one of the industries hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. In Ontario alone, visits from the US and abroad in 2020 were

Two former homeworkers launch new travel agency franchise

Two former Luxury Holidays and Honeymoons homeworkers have launched their own travel agency franchise business, recruiting seven of their LHH colleagues.

Vicky Yates-McCowan (pictured left) and Lyn Cooper (right) have named their new business LV Prestige Travel, which is a member of Protected Trust Services.

The pair are inviting other agents to join LV Prestige, which has a £99 sign-up fee and charges a subscription of £19.99 a month. Agents receive a commission split of between 60/40 and 80/20.

“Our goal is to grow LV Prestige Travel into a brand synonymous with exceptional service, reliability, and a passion for creating

Study: travel agents have disappeared and that’s a bad thing – News

The traditional travel agent is a thing of the past. Nowadays, the burden of planning a vacation falls on the consumer.

“Traveler decision support is one area that has become more and more automated and perhaps less and less helpful to a traveler,” said Mark Lehto, an industrial engineering professor at Purdue University.

Travel agents and booking websites, however, are only the starting point in a decentralized network of the tourism and hospitality industry, which also includes transportation services, hotels and restaurants. These businesses are moving toward automation to improve efficiency and cut costs, sometimes to the detriment of the

Disgraced travel agency Priority Escapes hints at comeback amid fraud allegations

Managing director Francois Swart said he was investigating a turnaround plan for Priority Escapes.

Francois Swart, the managing director of disgraced travel agency Priority Escapes, has shown no inclination to refund clients after they paid him for Maldives holidays that he wasn’t able to provide. But he has indicated, via a statement posted on the door of his abandoned offices, the possibility of a business comeback, with advisors and potential investors mulling over a last-ditch revival strategy.

The Citizen visited Swart’s offices at the Leslie Park Office block, near Fourways, Johannesburg, only to find the office space cleared out and

Former Appleton-based travel agent under fire after vacation cancellations

(WITI) — It’s a stressful start to a vacation: finding out you don’t have the room you booked. Multiple people say it happened to them after going through the same travel agency on Facebook.

Laurie and Richard Hoffmann and their three kids wanted to spend spring break splashing in water parks in the Wisconsin Dells. But that didn’t happen.

The Hoffmanns booked their room months before but never got a confirmation number. One day before their stay, they asked Club Wyndham at Glacier Canyon about their reservation.

“They asked us who we made it through, we told them Destination Vacation

Travel agent feud leads Ryanair to lower profit forecast by up to 5%

Even the world’s biggest low-cost carrier needs travel agents, it seems… After several online travel agencies (OTAs) suddenly stopped selling its flights late last year, Ryanair has lowered its profit forecast by as much as five per cent (around AU$164 million ) for the year ending March 2024.

In response to the hole in demand left by OTA business, Ryanair was forced to fill seats in December by reducing airfares.

Even still, Ryanair Holdings yesterday reported in a financial year (nine-month) update that it expected profits of up to €1.95 billion (AU$3.19 billion), down from its previous guidance of €2.05

Staples tests travel agents in stores in plan to grow travel services

Office supply retail giant Staples is engaging in discussions with travel industry partners and has tested having travel agents in some of its stores as it pursues a strategy of becoming “the first stop to nonstop travel” both in its stores and online.

In July Caitlin Gomez, a former vice president with Clear and the Global Business Travel Association who has also held roles with Travel Leaders Corporate and the American Society of Travel Agents, joined Staples as its first director of travel strategy and partnerships.

“Our goal is to establish Staples as the convenient, reliable and all-inclusive place for

Help! A British Travel Agency Has Our $3,891 and We Want It Back.

Dear Tripped Up,

In August 2020, we booked a trip to Iceland for $3,891 via Jetline Vacations, a deal we found through the email offer we signed up to receive through Travelzoo. Soon after, Iceland was closed to foreign visitors, so we contacted Jetline to ask for our money back. We didn’t hear from them for weeks, eventually filing a dispute with our credit card issuer. That seemed to jolt them, because then Jetline got back to us: They would give us a two-year credit. We ended up booking a trip to Portugal for April 2022, but were concerned when