When the airlines began imposing a maximum $50 cap on travel agency commissions a little less than two weeks ago, they seemed to have given the agents little choice but to meekly accept the lower fees.
But the airlines may have miscalculated. In recent days agents have begun organizing rallies, protest marches and demonstrations aimed at forcing the airlines to restore the traditional 10 percent commission. And some agents have said that if the cap is not lifted they will try to steer customers to foreign carriers on international flights.
While some travel industry executives consider the protests quixotic, many agents say the movement will succeed for reasons ranging from political pressure to the airlines' weak financial condition.
"It's one thing to impose the cap, it's another thing to make it stick," said Blake Fleetwood, who heads the Planetarium/American Express agency in New York City. "Before long the weakest carriers will begin cutting deals with agents. That's what happened when American tried to simplify air fares a couple of years ago -- every carrier went along, then pretty soon they made all kinds of exceptions and the attempt failed."
Some 2,000 irate agents met at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel in New York City last Wednesday to denounce the airlines' cap on commissions, and two nights earlier 250 agents held a protest meeting at the Marriott Hotel in Newark, N.J.
On the West Coast, some 500 agents filled a meeting room at the Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., early last week, and on Friday about 350 agents carried their protest onto Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills.
An ad hoc group, Coalition for the Traveling Public, which started in Torrance, Calif., on Feb. 10, has already enlisted some 2,000 agencies in New York, Florida, Minnesota and Illinois. Its members have vowed to fight the commission cap.
"We still think travel agents will realize the commission cap is in the best interest of both of us," one airline official said Friday on condition of anonymity, "but that realization might take longer than we thought."
Over the weekend, the board of the American Society of Travel Agents held an emergency meeting in Washington to discuss RTC the commission cap. The group scheduled a news conference for tomorrow to discuss the results of the meeting.
In recent days, many agents have bombarded the organization and its board members with faxes and telephone calls, warning them not to recommend charging fees to customers as an option.
When an executive of the organization seemed to support just such an option last week in a television interview, French C. Wallop, the president of Corporate Travel Services in Arlington, Va., sent the society a fax describing such talk as "unforgivable and outrageous." Most travel agents are reluctant to pass fees on to travelers, out of fear that they will book directly with the airlines.
But Thursday, American Express and Carlson Wagons-Lit Travel said they would soon start charging customers for services that once were free. Nonetheless, Roger Ballou, president of the American Express Travel Group, said of the commission cap, "It's nothing but a hidden fare increase."
A representative of the Coalition for the Traveling Public will meet today with Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Sen. Barbara Boxer, both Democrats from California, and the coalition hopes to meet with Republicans.