It must be the holiday season. The turkeys are taking over.
Oh, I don't mean all of my clients are turkeys. You have to understand that when I complain about my clueless clients I'm talking about maybe one percent of the hundreds of calls I handle per week. I fend off a multitude of cold calls and shoppers because I am the Leisure Specialist (translated: I'm not the lead agent for any particular account). So I get calls like yesterday's query from a woman who took a trip to Yosemite twelve years ago and wondered if I could book exactly the same thing for her. I could, but when she heard what twelve years inflation had done to the price, and learned she'd have to pay a service fee on top of that, she hung up on me. It makes me shake my head. There's quite a few people who find it hard to let go of the idea that certain trips cost a certain, fixed amount of money. They don't understand why time hasn't stood still.
The funny thing is, it does sometimes jiggle back and forth from one foot to the other if you know where to look. The fares to Europe have not changed significantly in the last five years, for instance. You can still go to London from the west coast for around $400 in the winter. But I can't turn back the clock for domestic fares. I've had three people in two days ask me when I think the airlines will have another fare war. My standard answer, although presented politely, is why should they? They're making more money than they've ever made in the history of their firms. They are charging outrageous prices and filling their planes. And now they've taken another big step towards their ultimate goal of shutting out the travel agencies. Four major carriers recently notified us that they have begun capping international airfare commissions at $100.
That is a huge chunk of income coming directly out of our bottom line. The ticket to Japan which I sold last week for $4330 would formerly have netted my agency $345. We got a hundred bucks and no incentive whatsoever to sell business class seats in the future. The airlines don't deserve that extra effort on my part any more. Anytime I sell a ticket that costs more than $1200 I start losing money because my time is being used up on a limited revenue transaction. I'll be putting everyone I can in coach. It's stupid. Well, it's stupid from my perspective. Travel agents sell 75 percent of the seats on any given flight, according to industry magazines, and we are collectively mad as hell about this latest attempt to take our living away from us. The sales force for the airlines isn't too crazy about it, either. You don't think the airlines are giving any of their front line reservationists a raise, do you? Not a chance. Relationships between airline staff and travel agents are degrading rapidly, becoming adversarial, and raised voices are a lot more common around the office these days when we try to resolve problems or get information.
I'm not angry when people question the fact that our agency charges a fee. That's a fair question, and one I don't mind answering. I only get angry when some misinformed traveler implies that paying me a fee to provide a service is lining my pocket at their expense. I want to ask that traveler if they work for free. Of course they don't. Why should I? The airlines have steadily withdrawn their traditional subsidizing of the cost of doing business with an intermediary, which is what's really happening, which means the passengers are going to have to change the way they handle their travel plans. They can call twelve airlines to see who has the lowest price. They can research their trip online by reviewing the information available on the Web, checking each airline's site, or a fare collection site like Travelocity. They can call the car companies and the hotels themselves, too. That's just fine, unless they happen to not have two or three hours to hunt down all the information. In that case, they can call a travel agent, pay a minor fee, and let the professionals do it for them.
Time doesn't stand still, and neither do we. But I really wish we didn't have to charge the damned fees.
