Mark Pestronk:
‘T
rejec
claim 16
HAWAII:
Residents of Molokai
continue to passionately
resist development.
36
NTA’s Lisa Simon:
‘
pe
hadn
4
www.travelweekly.coml
Section 1 of 3
THE NATIONAL NEWSPAPER OF THE TRAVEL INDUSTRY
DECEMBER 12, 2011
[ THE WEALTHY REMAIN INSULATED FROM ECONOMIC PAIN ]
Amid dire fiscal crisis warnings,
luxe suppliers eyeing prosperity
By Danny King
CANNES, France — If every party
has a pooper, John Andrews was
the guy playing the role at the 2011
International Luxury Travel Market
here last week.
A half-dozen red Ferraris sat parked in
front of the Palais des Festivals et des Congres, and event planners were still scrambling
to finalize the week’s events at some of the
Riviera’s most opulent hotels as Andrews,
a consulting editor at the Economist, took
the stage for his keynote on the conference’s
opening day and proceeded to pop everyone’s balloon.
“If the eurozone collapses, it will have con-
sequences that will be disastrous all over the
world,” Andrews warned, thus adding the European debt crisis to the industry’s laun- dry list of global economic challenges, which also included the effects of the Arab Spring. Moreover, he warned, “there can be no in- stant cure for America’s ills.” Only time will tell if Andrews is prescient or merely a paranoid Cassandra. But many of the luxury hoteliers who were among the ILTM’s 1,200 exhibitors from the hospitality, cruise and destination spaces were clearly banking on the latter as they trumpeted ag- gressive global expansion plans. Some merely assumed that many of the world’s current economic challenges would be resolved by the time their new hotels were scheduled to come online. Others alluded to expectations of a surge in affluent travelers from regions such as Asia See LUXURY on Page 47
Avoya says program is first to offer
full commission at the time of sale
By Johanna Jainchill
Travel is one of the few industries in which
sellers are typically paid weeks, months or
even a year after closing a sale. But the host
agency Avoya Travel last week introduced a
program designed to mitigate the frustration of selling a product that consumers
generally buy well in
advance but that suppliers typically pay
commissions on only
after travel is completed.
Breaking with long-standing industry tradition, Avoya is now
offering to pay commissions to participating
agents within its network immediately after
travel is booked.
Under Avoya’s new program, known as
Instant Commission, agents who sign on for
the instant-pay option will not have to wait
for vendor payments. Instead, Avoya will pay
commissions to independent contractors be-
fore the suppliers pay Avoya.
There is no cost to participate in the program, though agents will have to pay an “
accounting processing fee.” Avoya described
the fee as “insignificantly small,” though it
declined to disclose
the actual amount.
Avoya said the program was designed to
alleviate one of the
main financial drawbacks to being a travel
agent, commission
latency.
Jeff Anderson, Avoya’s vice president of
marketing, said that in some scenarios agents
are booking into 2013, knowing that vendors
will not be paying Avoya for more than a
year.
“That doesn’t seem like a huge motivating
See AVOYA on Page 46
‘Instant Commission’
eliminates the need for
Avoya affiliates to wait for
payments from vendors.
READERS ANNUAL
CHOICE
AWARDS
Winners will be announced on Dec. 15 at the ninth
annual Readers Choice Awards Gala at the Plaza Hotel
in New York and will be featured in our Jan. 16 issue.
PAGE 19
