Members Respond to Travelport Announcement
Thursday, January 5, 2012 – Following the announcement issued earlier this week by Derek Sharp, Travelport’s President of the Americas region, informing that Travelport was changing the features and fees within their new Agility program, ACTA members extended congratulations to the Association for our efforts in this matter. On December 16, 2011, ACTA issued a member advisory notifying that following the review of Travelport’s new program and initial member feedback, ACTA was openly concerned with the manner in which Travelport’s Agility was introduced to users. We objected to users being automatically opted-in to Agility as opposed to being given the option of opting in on their own.ACTA was also critical of the 30 days’ notice received prior to implementation, which certainly wouldn't allow for a proper analysis by our members.
ACTA reached out to Travelport following the news release of their new product and they willingly responded to some general questions about Agility. Dialogue continued between ACTA and Travelport’s Canadian representative throughout the holidays, coinciding with similar conversations taking place between Travelport and ACTA’s sister association, ASTA, in the United States.
We are pleased that Travelport listened to what ACTA members were saying and that a workable solution could be reached. When the Travelport subscriber contracts expire, it will be up to the members to decide on renegotiation.
ACTA President and COO, David McCaig stated, "Having a healthy retail-supplier relationship is important for the travel industry and ACTA thanks Travelport for recognizing the value of our retail members as well as our members for their input enabling ACTA to formulate a constructive argument against the initial roll-out of Travelport’s Agility program.”