BRANTFORD, ON — Travelonly chairman Patrick Luciani said a Travel Industry of Ontario proposal to register individual travel agents as well as outside and home-based agents is “unnecessary and redundant”.

“TICO already has the information it is proposing to create,” Luciani said at a TICO Town Hall meeting. Luciani pointed to Travelonly, in business for 35 years, as “the perfect model” for how the system efficiently works.

“Every Travelonly 21st century community-based professional is required to write the TICO exam,” Luciani said, “and TICO knows who they are. TICO already has in its existing data base all of the information it requires to respond to questions from consumers as to which travel agents have or have not been properly certified by TICO.”

He added that there had been a shift in the retail business model pointing to a recent ASTA trade report which revealed that home-based agent selling had increased by over 300% in the past seven years alone.

Similar patterns of growth are taking place in Ontario with home-based and outside agents, Luciani said but argued that one key fact remained.

“If you haven’t passed the TICO exam, and you’re not attached to a licensed travel agency, you can’t sell travel in Ontario.”

Luciani also stated his opinion that travel agents, who often put in long hours of uncompensated work in situations of industry failures, should receive their commissions from the industry compensation fund in such situations.