President's Podium: Making Progress on ADM's
ADM's are a sore spot for ACTA and its members. I have spoke quite openly about my thoughts in recent President's podium.
In meetings with my counterparts of the WTAAA last month we spent alot of time discussing the IATA resolutions as they apply to travel agencies, and the changes that were needed to create a better working partnership between airlines and travel agents. Specifically addressed were matters of the airlines’ abuse of the Agency Debit Memo (ADM). We know that IATA processes millions of ADM's for amounts beyond our imagination, at a processing cost that is burdening the industry with wasted resources.
In our conversations with IATA on the issue we learned that IATA, like ACTA, has also been monitoring ARC's progress with the "Debit Memo's Working Group" and are keen to follow in their footsteps by developing a global initiative. In fact, we confirmed that IATA has been mandated to create and "ADM Working Group" based on the ARC model with the primary objective of:
1 - Validating and quantifying the root causes of ADM's (as already determined by ARC)
2 - Developing solutions to remove or minimize these root causes by working in partnership with industry stakeholders
IATA will work in partnership with ARC on this task, along with Trade Associations, Airlines, Agents, as well as GDSs and ATPCO and hope to launch this initiative in October.
I am very happy to see that IATA has recognized the problem and is harnessing its resources to tackle a very serious problem. I believe that if we continue to work together we can create the environment to solve some of the most contentious issues in the industry
Sincerely,