It's a bit funereal at work this week. The airlines have cut our commissions from 8% to 5%. That's a 37% reduction in our income, and no one's happy (except, presumably, the airlines). The fees we charge for each ticket are the only thing keeping us in business right now. A lot of people say, "Oh, the Internet must be cutting into your business, enticing away customers and so forth." That's not a problem. A puny percentage of ticketing gets done on the Internet, and they're mostly small tickets, the cheap stuff we weren't earning much on anyway. Not getting a decent commission for handling any airline tickets is, on the other hand, a serious problem.
But I won't bore you with all that. Suffice to say no one's being laid off, we'll be focusing on leisure travel rather than corporate, and our very own web site offers quite a few bargains on cruises and tours. I expect we'll survive.
Tonight I visited Janice Gelb, the 1999 DUFF delegate, to see her photos and hear the gossip from the Australian Worldcon. Boy, am I glad I didn't go. It seems to have been a very poorly run convention, and everyone I would like to have seen was desperately overworked. Unfortunately, Australia just doesn't have the fannish resources to put on a really topnotch Worldcon. Their head of Programming had a nervous breakdown, and the only person to volunteer to replace him turned out to be someone who had no clue how to manage the logistics (which are both considerable and essential). No wonder so many people came back saying they'd worked on it. Shanghaied into saving the con!
I'm looking forward to a much smaller convention, OryCon, which is precisely 30 days from today. I know this because I've been keeping my eye on my air reservation since August. In order to use a travel agent discount I couldn't issue my own ticket any earlier, and there was always the chance the correct class of service would sell out. My nerves held out, the class of service was still there, and now I'm all happy. Gonna go to the con, gonna see all my friends, gonna get to Powell's bookstore, yeah!
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