Travel Weekly webcasts: Refunds and industry lobbying are among the issues raised in this week’s w LASTMINUTE’S CORRADINO


AGENCY BOSSES


Travel Weekly’s Lucy Huxley


Rob Kenton


Marco Corradino


Travolution’s Lee Hayhurst


Lastminute boss accuses Iata of refund ‘tactics’


T


he boss of lastminute.com parent LM Group has accused aviation industry body Iata of “playing


politics” over refunds by ignoring airline members’ “delaying tactics”. Speaking on a webcast with


Travel Weekly’s sister title Travolution, Marco Corradino, chief executive of LM Group, said the European OTA had been caught between customers demanding money back and airline partners refusing to refund. He said many US and UK carriers,


including BA and easyJet, had been refunding due to concerns over their reputations, but major groups in Europe had not, despite receiving taxpayer bailouts. “This, for me, is unacceptable not only for my company and the reputation of my company but also for the consumer, because if you hurt the consumer they don’t have the money to book again,” he said. Corradino compared the way


airlines reacted to protect themselves as the virus spread to how European countries ignored Schengen rules and unilaterally closed borders. “It is


12 18 JUNE 2020


the law of the jungle,” he said. OTAs such as lastminute.com,


which has seen a 50% reduction in staff levels, were left having to apply for each individual refund one by one over the phone, he said. Corradino said Iata privately admits it understands his frustrations but publicly says refunds are being paid. “Technically, the refunding


process was in place, but practically, this was a delaying tactic,” he said. “We experience this kind of


situation in politics and now also in my industry. This is very sad.” Corradino called on Iata to


intervene to get its members to pay refunds and said that although the aviation body had, in recent years, become an agent of change to balance the power between airlines and agents, this had not happened during the Covid-19 crisis. He said lastminute.com was in


“good shape” and was fortunate to have come into the crisis on the back of two consecutive years of record trading, but conceded that the pandemic had effectively turned LM Group back into a start-up.


Helen Dooley


Phil Nuttall


Agents want more support after ‘bailing out’ industry


T


ravel agents have called for more support and recognition from the government after “bailing


out” the industry in this crisis. Agency bosses said their staff


had been toiling to help worried and frustrated holidaymakers during the Covid-19 pandemic whereas airlines and operators had shut their phone systems and become hard to contact. The Travel Village Group chief


executive Phil Nuttall said: “Agents who have kept their phone lines open have bailed everyone [in the industry] out. The only people consumers have got to vent their anger on is us. We have done an incredible job yet again; we have been social workers. “If government doesn’t get to


grips with the travel industry and understand the value of travel agents, and support us on this journey, then it’s going to be really tough.” Rob Kenton, managing director of


Triangle Travel, said agents had been “at the bottom of the food chain” in the refund process. Kenton said the actions of some


Agents who have


kept their phone lines on have bailed everyone [in the industry] out


operators had made him “look like a liar” and resulted in him losing customers for good. “You tell the client that you’re still


chasing [the operator for the refund], but they don’t believe you,” he said. “They think you’re sat on the money. I’m losing clients because of that. Helen Dooley, partner at More


Travel, said the situation was “terribly frustrating”. She said she had reported some operators to Abta for breaking its code of conduct. “On the whole, everyone’s been


amazing,” she said. “But we’ve still got some operators


causing us problems and completely ignoring us. We’ve got customers on the one hand waiting for the refund, and tour operators that we’ve had lovely partnerships with up until now that are just not processing anything.”


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