The Australian Federation of Travel Agents (AFTA) has expressed its disappointment with the Qantas decision, announced yesterday, to reduce front-end commissions paid to travel agents on international tickets from 5 per cent to 1 per cent.
AFTA says it has made strong representations to Qantas on the pressing need to maintain the status quo given travel agents’ primary revenue reliance on international travel and the reality that international travel is unlikely to normalise before mid-2022 at the earliest.
While these representations have resulted in Qantas providing a 1 year lead-in to the reduced commission structure, AFTA and our members are very disappointed and hope that Qantas will work with AFTA to minimise the impact including through optimising agent benefits on QDP.
Statement from the AFTA Board
“AFTA on behalf of our members and the consumers we support is very disappointed.
It’s true there has been a gradual global transition to reduce BSP payments but that transition happened in a pre-COVID world. The reality of COVID and the ongoing paralysis of international travel until at least mid-2022 puts Australia’s travel agents and businesses in a very difficult position.
While we are grateful that Qantas has provided 1 year’s notice of these changes following strong representations from AFTA, the reality is that the ongoing paralysis of international travel to and from Australia has hit travel agents and businesses extremely hard and this is another unwelcome blow.
The AFTA Board notes the longstanding relationship Qantas has had with travel agents and businesses and we ask Qantas to work closely with us to optimise benefits for agents as we move forward including on QDP.”
