Quite frankly, dahrlings, I’ve never been big on group participation before 9:00 pm. You not only have to deal with people – which is irritating at the best of times – but they are all sober. So I really can’t blame anyone for ignoring the TICO “Town Halls”, ACTA AGM’s, or any other travel discussions which benefit our industry. It’s sooo much more fun to complain that nobody’s fixing all our problems.
I figure, if there’s a couple of eager beavers willing to do the grunge work, why bother? Take TravCorp’s Jeff Element who is Chairman of the Alternate Finance Committee with TICO. He’s no slouch. I’m sure between him and the one or two agents who show up at the TICO Town Hall in Toronto on Monday night, someone will work out a consumer protection program for the country. One of them can take on the airline issue – the fact that they are federally regulated and TICO is provincial is a bit sticky, but with a bit of effort, they’ll figure it out. The other can take on the fact that only 3 provinces have consumer protection – how hard can that be? And that leaves the whole credit card processing issue. Being very experienced with using plastic, I have some ideas on that front – but going to one of these things is really not in the cards.
My motto is, when there’s a spill in the house, I walk around it. Someone will eventually clean it up.