Arnie Weissmann:
The dirty little secrets of
hosting a tour group in Europe.
P. 12
www.travelweekly.com
FLIGHT DELAYS:
P resident Bush weighs in,
yet again.
P. 6
THE NATIONAL NEWSPAPER OF THE TRAVEL INDUSTRY
NOVEMBER 19, 2007
Buyer of Liberty, Gogo
aims to be tops in bricks
be involved in the business for much longer.
Michelle Kassner, daughter of Fred Kassner and the last founding-family member in
the business, will step down as president of
Gogo but will remain with the company on a
consulting basis for several months after the
deal closes in January.
Following the acquisition,
Michelle L iberty Travel COO Cathy
P elaez will become president
Kassner will o f the Liberty Travel retail
brand; headquarters will re-
leave the com- m ain in Ramsey, N.J.
pany following Neither FLT nor Liberty
T ravel has indicated who will
Flight Centre’s r eplace Kassner as head of
G ogo.
acquisition. During an integration per iod, Liberty Travel will be
jointly led by Pelaez and Sue
Rennick, head of the integration team. Ren-
nick, who headed Flight Centre’s western
See LIBERTY on Page 83
By Lester Craft and Michelle Baran
Liberty Travel, a family-run business that
has been prominent in retail and wholesale
travel for more than 50 years, is being sold to
Australian travel giant Flight Centre Ltd. for
$135 million.
Founded by Fred Kassner
and Gilbert Haroche in 1951,
Liberty is the parent of the
Liberty Travel retail chain and
of wholesaler Gogo Worldwide Vacations.
Flight Centre, or FLT, views
the acquisition as part of a
plan to become “the largest
offline travel agency in the
U.S.,” said Greg Dixon, president of Flight Centre’s North
American operations, based
in Vancouver.
The $135 million will go to the Kassner
and Haroche families, but neither family will
[ HOST AGENCY SEEKS TO RESOLVE DISPUTE ]
YTB confirms it was canceled by IATA
By Nadine Godwin
YTB Travel Network CEO Kim Sorensen
confirmed that the multimillion-dollar travel
company was among the firms canceled earlier this month by IATA for violating accreditation standards.
IATA earlier this month disclosed that it
WORLD BEAT
Mai tais and Green is the Frenc h tourism
melodies on color of hotel/ sees Sarkozy
a Waikiki motel show as good for
bar crawl. in New York. business.
P. 58 P. 18 P. 62
was canceling four U.S. agencies, saying the
agencies had engaged in “improper lending,
subcontracting or hiring to a third party of
an IATA numeric code by agencies.”
Sorensen said IATA had accused his agency of lending the numeric code to “third parties,” meaning the company’s independent
contractors, which are called referring travel
agents, or RTAs, in the YTB business model.
Making the number available to contractors is “the same as what any host agency has
done,” he said.
Sorensen declined to go into the matter
further while YTB, through its attorneys, is
trying to resolve the “very fixable” dispute.
“We take [IATA’s] standards very seriously and are working … to guarantee that we
meet or exceed both IATA’s regulations and
our own high standards,” Sorensen said in a
statement.
At the same time, Sorensen added that “the
ability of YTB or its RTAs to sell travel and be
paid commissions … will not be affected in
See Y TB on Page 82
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