Travel agent commissions heading for 0%.

MEXICO CITY, Feb 20, 2003 (El Universal/Corporate Mexico by Internet Securities, Inc. via COMTEX) -- The worldwide tendency for travel agents to receive less in airline commissions than before is becoming globalized, and 0% seems to be the only landing pad in sight, according to an industry consultant. Grant Caplan, a partner at Houston-based Consulting Strategies, said that today travel agents in the United States do not receive commission for ticket sales and that this trend will likely manifest itself in Mexico soon.Zero percent is also the airline commission in Europe, Australia and parts of Asia. "Mexico is going in that direction, toward 0%, it is the tendency," said Caplan. The reason, he said, is that ticket distribution costs are very high. Thus, airlines have come to see tickets as a commodity-a raw material in the global economy.Airlines enacted these new standards as a defense mechanism against economic crisis and because of increased sales from the Internet. Today, he said, it is known that buying tickets on the internet is the cheapest way because the consumer has the most options and is not necessarily influenced by an agent who may offer only prices that carry high agent commissions.While it is true that direct sales have made serious gains in the market, the move to make travel agents irrelevant may be premature. Today, about 80% of the world's air tickets are sold through agencies. Of the US$120 billion air ticket market, only between 12.5% and 16.7% of that amount is spent online."The airline companies cannot change immediately," Caplan said. "The travel agencies play a vital role in their economy."

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