Forgive Richard Smart and the team at the Travel Industry Council of Ontario if they feel like part of a Monty Python sketch (“I wish to register a complaint!”). But with TICO celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, its bean-counters have tallied some amazing numbers – not least only 6,500 official consumer complaints – during the last quarter century.
That’s not to say there hasn’t been countless enquiries by phone and email, and misplaced gripes and questions from consumers really meant for entities other than the provincially appointed regulating body for the travel industry, which administers the Travel Industry Act (regulating consumer protection laws) and maintains the Compensation Fund, while also engaging the travel trade and Ontario consumers.
Since its formation in 1997, TICO lists the following endeavours/accomplishments:
• Answered 115,656 consumer enquiries
• Closed 6,594 consumer complaints
• Facilitated $4,962,172 in restitution
• Paid $14,880,349 from the Compensation Fund to 24,037 consumers
• Repatriated 4,266 consumers stranded in destination
• Conducted 46,155 bench reviews of registrants’ financial records
• Issued 2,675 warnings to unregistered operators
Citing Conquest as the biggest Canadian travel company failure during TICO’s tenure, president and CEO Smart, who has been at the helm for the past eight years, expects that going forward, Crystal Cruises will command considerable time and energy (and perhaps payouts) for TICO due to the scale and complicated nature of the cruise company’s failure in January.
Not surprisingly, the TICO complaints department has been humming during the pandemic, with a “tidal wave” of calls, emails, and written notices – from 1,500-2,500 in a typical year to almost 11,000 in 2021-22 – and all handled without staff additions to the current team of two.
Grievances typically concerned and continue to reflect cancelled travel, from voucher redemption and expiration issues to pricing, customer service complaints, plus undisclosed and added fees.
Many are outside TICO’s “bailiwick” (such as airline issues), though staff does its best to redirect to the right place, or intervenes on behalf of consumers to help get resolution if possible.
But “in the whole complaints area, consumers would like us to have more teeth than we have,” Smart admits.
As such, TICO conducts proactive education campaigns to help consumers and agents avoid problems before they happen – such as booking through a registered tour operator rather than directly with an end supplier – and how to navigate them if they do occur.
“Book alone and you’re on your own is the old saying,” says Smart, echoing TICO’s central slogan, which it continually aims to reinforce with the public through marketing and educational campaigns.
Smart notes that TICO also gets an earful from its registrants, with current pandemic complaints typically concerning wait times with suppliers, reduced staffing, higher prices, passports, airports, and airlines, as well as booking complexities including disclosures and non-revenue generating activities.
An ongoing complaint is registration fees, which TICO hopes to address by next year with a major review conducted over the winter (see “related article” at the end of this story).
On the positive side, Smart says agents are indicating that the pandemic has prompted more acceptance by consumers to pay service fees to travel agents, as well as for purchasing travel insurance.
And while the pandemic led to a 20% decline in the number of registrants in the province (480 closures, leaving just over 2,000), new registrations and reinstatements this year had by April already exceeded those in 2021. Similarly, TICO has seen the number of people registering for its exam triple and the number of those completing it double (including “a huge number of students”).
To that end, TICO is introducing four videos to be used in higher education institutions to encourage more students to join the industry.
Smart notes that the Ontario industry revenues have recovered to about half of pre-pandemic revenues, but its modelling suggests about a 70% recovery by 2023.
Led by a surge in air and package sales (and with the high-volume winter season to come), Smart says that things are clearly not as bad for the industry as suggested by some media, but he does acknowledge that “we have a ways to go.”
However, he quickly assures, “things are trending in the right direction. Consumer confidence is slowly rebounding, and the value of travel agencies and their advisors has clearly strengthened. Our focus now is establishing what the ‘new normal’ looks like.”
And if you don’t like what that is, you know where to complain.
RELATED ARTICLE: The future of TICO – and Ontario fees
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