More than 100 travel agents and the American Society of Travel Agents (ASTA) visited Capitol Hill for the inaugural Capitol Summit Wednesday, communicating with and lobbying representatives in Washington on a variety of issues important to the travel and tourism industries.
Travel agents play a critical role, selling more than 430,000 airline tickets per day and acting as the primary distribution channel for cruises and tours.
"It's really important for legislators to meet the names and faces of the people who put them in office and are watching how they vote on travel issues," said Zane Kerby, ASTA's president and CEO in a statement.
Getting a chance to see the inner workings of our democracy is beneficial to both sides.
"Today, we saw not only how ASTA works for travel agents but democracy in action, where travel agents as constituents got to meet face to face with congressman and senators in order to directly lobby on behalf of the travel industry and travelers themselves," said TravelPulse Managing Editor Michael Schottey, who was also on Capitol Hill.
The experience was also encouraging from a political perspective.
"As much as D.C. has become polarized, and it would be easy to think that talking does very little good, nothing beats a face to face meeting with a constituent," said Schottey.
"While congressmen and senators might have their opinions, they do truly care about what the people in their district want because ultimately on election day that's who they answer to."
Travel agents and ASTA were on the Hill to promote a variety of different initiatives moving through Congress.
A hot-button issue making headlines is the potential renegotiation of travel to Cuba. The Trump administration is currently reviewing the policy set forth by the Obama administration that once again allowed certain types of travel to the country.
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"Although ASTA members admitted that this was a sensitive issue and one not easy to change hearts and minds about, it is clear that travel to Cuba is an integral piece of the travel agency market and millions of dollars would be lost if travel to the island nation was again shut down," said Schottey.
Cuba is one of the top legislative priorities for ASTA. The organization believes that "it is incumbent upon Congress to do away with the "travel ban" once and for all, providing Americans the freedom to travel across the globe without restriction and allowing them to act as ambassadors of freedom and American values abroad."
Another top priority is FAA reauthorization process. Travel agents are adamant that no new mandated disclosures be added when selling air travel.
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Travel agents have to read out loud these disclosures to clients when selling air travel over the phone or in person and are asking that Congress lessen the impact of any new disclosures on the agency community.
"This is the bad behavior of airlines causing headaches for travel agents," said Schottey.
To put into perspective the magnitude of this issue, travel agents who make an average of $40,000-$50,000 per year could be saddled with a $30,000 fee for not reading these disclosures.
The other main issue at the summit was the Travel Agent Retail Fairness Act (H.R. 2515).
Travel agents and ASTA lobbied for the bill, which is a law that would exempt travel agencies from overtime rules if they meet statutory criteria. ASTA's position is that this is "matter of fairness" and that the bill will "treat travel agents like any other retail business."
ASTA says that the bill will preserve 100,000 travel agency jobs.
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