A lack of unity under the Dubai Travel and Tour Agents Group (DTTAG) means the body is paralysed to implement change. Leo Fewtrell, general manager, DTTAG explains the challenges he is up against.
ATN: Why doesn’t DTTAG have full membership of all the travel trade in Dubai as trade bodies do in other markets?
In Abu Dhabi, Ras Al Khaimah, Sharjah, Bahrain, in order to get a license as a travel agent you have to be a member of the travel agent group there. In Dubai you don’t. Unfortunately the Civil Aviation here will not even entertain the idea of supporting us or making it mandatory for agents to join DTTAG.
ATN: Why not - given that this model has been successful in other markets?
For the rationale that Dubai doesn’t do this kind of thing. We don’t force, we have an open skies policies - which is ludicrous.
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As I’ve said to them so many times – if you want travel and tourism groups to behave in a proper and respectable manner, you need to regulate the industry for the protection of the end-user. And DTTAG is far less likely to get the body officially recognised while we still only have 60 odd members.
ATN: It sounds like a chicken and egg situation. So what is DTTAG doing to bring more travel agent members on board?
We are constantly trying to recruit. We write to the agents, email them, phone them every month. We have just now started another push where we have asked each member of the executive committee to recruit another member.
We’ve set up a DTTAG linked-in discussion group because we want to encourage people to join. We want people to give their comments in a forum of what the professionals think about the business that they’re in.
We’ve just started a DTTAG e-zine. We have a website where we put on special offers - things of interest to the travel trade. We look to get discounts to the travel trade. We are getting more and more things out there. We are not trying to marginalise non-members.
ATN: Why have you only managed to get 60 members so far? Is it a question of cost?
The fee for the majority of the agents is AED2000 a year – if you cannot afford AED 2000 you shouldn’t be in the business.
I even did a deal with EmQuest and I got them to agree that they would pay the sponsorship fee for ten agents who are using EmQuest and some of the agents here are so appalling that half of them wouldn’t even send the forms in.
People go in to those agencies and buy tickets and the people who are running them are not even capable of filling in a form. Would you buy from them if you knew that?
It’s a case of being bone idle and lazy - and yes you can use those words.
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