ADMs must be abolished altogether

Monika Grzesik, Arabian Treavel News Editor.

How can bleeding travel agents dry be the right way to improve standards in the industry?

The ADM issue seems to highlight perfectly the complex nature of this industry that we are in. There are so many different stakeholders involved it’s impossible to really get to the bottom of who is truly at fault when it comes to the crippling fines (apparently often spiralling into the hundreds of thousands of Dirhams) that travel agents are routinely forced to pay out to airlines in the form of Agency Debit Memos.

Is it really the case that airlines are out to greedily fleece the travel trade for every penny they’re worth? Should we blame the GDSs for not updating their systems with the correct ticket booking information promptly enough — leaving travel agents to unknowingly make ticketing errors that are not their fault in the first place?

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Or is the case that agents are just that negligent in their work, and deserve to be penalised for their mistakes?

To me, it appears that ADMs are a bit like speed cameras — watching intently from the sidelines for the slightest error, for which they can slap on a massive fine.

And having heard all the evidence, I’m going to vote for an abolition of ADMs altogether. After all, in what other industry would you sell a suppliers product and then be hit with huge penalties for making simple admin mistakes?

Astonishing too is the fact that it’s the airlines alone who are ‘judge and jury’ in these matters. If a travel agent disputes an ADM (within the tightly stipulated 14-day time period) shouldn’t there be an external body who has the right to decide who is right or wrong?

But then it gets worse. Surely the most reprehensible thing about the entire ADM issue is who is responsible for paying up.

In many cases its not the travel agencies but the front line staff themselves, who are forced to bear the brunt of these fines. Agents who — let’s be honest here — are not exactly on rockstar wages in the first place, are forced to put their hands into their own pockets and will often “forfeit several months salary” just to fork out for these fines.

Frankly I am fairly gobsmaked that this practice is so readily accepted in the industry here. It is surely the responsibilty of the travel agencies here to invest in their staff to ensure they are knowledgable and trained up enough to avoid ADMs at all costs, (this is something Kanoo Travel has apparently devoted major resources to, to great effect), and to shoulder any such costs as a natural part of the travel agency business.

And what about the airlines? Having first completely wiped out all travel agent commissions, airlines now employ third-party ‘debt collectors’, whose sole purpose is to hunt down travel agencies for these fines, leaving some travel agents living completely on the bread line.

It’s clear that much more investment is needed all round to train up ticketing staff so that mistakes don’t happen in the first place — from the travel agencies, the GDSs and the airlines.

So maybe airlines such as British Airways could think about devoting their efforts and resources into a much more proactive approach to ensure the trade sells their product in exactly the way they want — instead of slapping on these endless fines for each microscopic bending of the rules and regulations.

There must be other methods to improve standards — unless of course the airlines really are only interested in bleeding travel agents dry?