Managing Your Travel Business: How to Fight "Destination Bypass"
by John Hawks

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That's the experience of Staci Blunt, CTC, CTP, an OSSN member who owns Family-Friendly Vacations in Mesa, Ariz. A 20-year veteran of the tourism industry, Staci knows from experience that it's the job of state tourism offices and convention and visitors bureaus to help travel agents sell their destinations.

In cities like Salt Lake City and Tucson, tourism officials have partnered with Travelocity to provide bookable hotel stays and resort packages for visitors. Convention and visitors bureaus in other destinations have actually cut out any middlemen by negotiating special trip offers directly with local suppliers and selling them via the bureaus' Web sites. These practices are an historic departure from the traditional role of destination marketing organizations. In the past, they focused primarily on promoting travel to their locations; now, they have moved into the territory of actually closing the sale with travelers.

Regardless of the methods involved, these practices constitute unfair competition in many instances, because they use public funds (taxes dedicated to tourism promotion, such as hotel "bed taxes," or appropriations from city or state budgets) to sell travel services in direct competition with small businesses like travel agencies that already sell those services. "Travelocity has the technology to do this, and it's a "win-win" for everybody but the general travel agent," Staci Blunt points out.

In these cases, she (and other OSSN agents) are not simply competing against Travelocity; rather, they're battling in the marketplace against the online agency and the marketing power of the publicly funded convention and visitors bureau or state tourism office that spends thousands (or millions) of dollars in advertising, marketing, and public relations programs that feature the Travelocity offers.

If you're facing this type of unfair competition, what can you do?

Contact decision makers at the tourism office or bureau immediately. You may be surprised to find that, in most cases, Travelocity or other national travel sellers actually approached the bureau first with an offer to sell packages. It's also not uncommon for local tourism officials to be unaware that local travel agencies like yours can also provide online booking engines and other support to do what Travelocity does. In any case, write a letter to the chief staff person at the bureau (the executive director or the president) outlining your concerns, and ask for a face-to-face meeting. Get their explanation firsthand about why they launched a bookable travel program with a company that doesn't pay local taxes.

Offer your travel agency's services instead. Request the right to have your travel offers listed by the bureau alongside Travelocity's packages (or the right to bid as a local business against Travelocity for this assignment). Stress the fairness aspect of this issue, pointing out that (as a local taxpayer) you should be given the same level playing field as the big online agencies that don't pay local taxes. Be prepared to demonstrate the online booking engines you can offer through your host agency, your GDS, or other sources.

If the bureau won't budge, go over its head. Most city convention and visitors bureaus have an outside board of directors, so you can contact the chairman of the board with your concerns. Ask for the chance to address the full board at its next meeting about these unfair practices. Also, ask the bureau if it receives city funding or local tourism tax dollars; if so, contact your city council member or even the mayor asking for a meeting to discuss this problem. If you have contacts with the local media, you might even take your story to them, pointing out how you've been unfairly locked out of working with the city's tourism officials by a big online agency that doesn't pay local taxes.

Contact OSSN Headquarters with the details about your problem. We'll gladly send a letter to the tourism office or bureau supporting your request for fair treatment, and we may have other ideas that will help you locally.

Your local presence -- as a business owner, and as a taxpayer -- will be your best weapon in fighting this type of unfair competition in the travel industry.