Even in the best partnerships, everyone needs their own space – and that’s certainly the case for travel retailers and travel suppliers.
The headline for this edition of ‘It Happened This Week’ is: ‘Move afoot to start association allowing only retail agent membership’
Fed up with underhanded tactics from certain suppliers, a travel agent named Sheila Lantos with Tuxedo Travel Centre in Winnipeg wrote to Travelweek with a Letter to the Editor, putting out the call for an agents-only association. “To own and operate a travel agency in Canada is like trying to swim in an ocean full of sharks with both feet and hands tied,” said Lantos in her letter, before outlining several instances of egregious behavior from unnamed suppliers. Her conclusion? “Perhaps we need an association of our own, with no representatives of airlines and other suppliers sitting on the board of directors making rules and decisions for us, against us.”
The response, as Lantos put it, was tremendous. In a second Letter to the Editor, published a month later, she said she’d received letters and phone calls from travel agents across Canada, “from Prince Edward Island to Vancouver Island, and from outlets belonging to big agencies, such as Marlin, Uniglobe, P. Lawson and Goliger’s, to name just a few, to small agencies employing just one counsellor. I have talked with owners, managers and counsellors; with ACTA members; and with chains, consortiums and independents. It doesn’t matter where you belong, you all seem to feel alone.”
The momentum for Lantos’ call for an agents-only association was so strong, it was the lead headline and story in Travelweek, in the same issue as Lantos’ second Letter to the Editor.
Did the headline appear in Travelweek in 1984, 1992 or 2001?
Fill out the contest form below, with your guess and your email address. We’ll announce the answer and the winner next week, along with the next contest headline. Last week’s headline about Onex Corp. and WestJet ran in May 2019. Our winner for Week #11 is The Travel Agent Next Door’s Cheryl Neufeld from Lethbridge, AB. Congratulations Cheryl!
Every Wednesday in Travelweek Daily, we’re posting an article from Travelweek’s archives, spanning the years 1973 – 2023. Guess the correct year the story ran, and you could win a $50 Amazon gift card. There’s a new headline and a new chance to win every single week.
