The European Commission is preparing a blow for travel agencies and operators. A huge blow. The Commission, incongruously taking up the cudgel in defense of consumers, has proposed abolishing the down payment customers leave with travel agencies and operators.
Plainly the men in Brussels and Strasbourg have no idea what it means to try to make ends meet in the tourism industry. The down payment - which by the way exists in any kind of transaction, so it is not clear why this should only apply to organised tourism - is one of those cash flows that allow travel agencies and trade in general to keep going, because it is ready cash. I don't think anyone has to call 2022’s Nobel prizewinning economist Philip H. Dybvig to understand something this simple.
The truth is that these decision makers live in an ivory tower and never step outside it, as if they were barricaded into a chamber that is open to the world but sealed off from it. They should try to break these seals, otherwise much more is going to get broken.
Giuseppe Aloe
Editor in Chief
