Agent fees to make air travel costlier

Come November and airline tickets are set to get more expensive. As the 0% commission regime for the travel agents becomes the new order of the day, a new component-transaction fee will be added to the ticket, which will be charged from the consumer.
In lieu of the 5% commission that agents received on the basic airfares, a standard fee of Rs 350 on domestic air tickets (economy) and Rs 500 on domestic (business) will be levied.
The fee on international air ticket will be in the range of Rs 1,200-2,500 (economy), Rs 2,000-5,000 (business) and Rs 5,000-10,000 (first class).
Moreover, airlines have also agreed on the demand of printing the transaction fee on the ticket till December 2009 at least. This charge will show on the ticket in the `other charges’ column. Airlines too, will charge the same fee as travel agents for booking tickets on all channels of distribution including the web.
The new rates will ensure that the travel agents get better returns on the gross ticket value than before. For instance, a Mumbai to Dubai Air India tickets earlier fetched a commission of Rs 485. However, now the agent will get Rs 1,200 for booking the same ticket. Till recently, travel agents were up in arms against the scrapping of the commission and were demanding its postponement till March 2009.
23/09/08 Surabhi Agarwal/Financial Express

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Categories: Indian Aviation- In General Sep 2008