The Travel Industry Council of Ontario (TICO) has revealed plans for a promised "comprehensive consultation process with registrants and stakeholders."
The consultations will focus on TICO's funding framework and fee model proposals, which include the Compensation Fund.
TICO had conducted a review of its funding framework over the past year, but as Open Jaw has reported, tensions with the trade have been growing, with ACTA and CATO protesting a lack of transparency about the findings of the TICO review and resulting recommendations to the province about the future financing of the consumer compensation fund, even though both organizations had members on TICO's board and had requested TICO to reveal what recommendations it had made to the province. The trade is pushing TICO and the province to institute a user-pay model funded by consumers, rather than the trade, saying a trade-funded Compensation Fund is "unsustainable."
TICO says a "comparator scan was conducted" to better understand the practices and approaches of comparable travel regulatory bodies in other regions, such as Quebec.
TICO plans to release the proposals resulting from this review in the first week of OCT 2023 and will host virtual and in-person sessions and provide an online survey for feedback purposes.
More information is available on TICO's website.
