Air Malta’s chairman Lawrence Zammit told Maltese travel agents during a meeting last week that soon Air Malta will no longer give any commission on the sale of air tickets. He did not announce when this will be operational but Air Malta is due to launch its new interactive website in June.

During the meeting, the chairman, surrounded by top Air Malta officials, told the agents that the airline had to keep cutting down on costs in view of the competition it was facing. Thus, during Mr Zammit’s chairmanship the commission to travel agents has gone down from nine per cent to eight, then to four and now, eventually, to zero!

This was the second meeting the chairman had with the travel agents. The meeting last week was for the second tier of IATA approved travel agents. The others were given more than a month’s notice of this drastic change the airline intends to bring about. In fact, agents at the meeting last week complained of discrimination by Air Malta.

This followed similar accusations with regard to pricing. Air Malta officials admitted that at times they were forced to offer different price levels to agents. There was general anger over this and similar statements made by officials, as well as the fact that Air Malta is trying to reduce its expenses not by curbing its overspending in many other fields but depriving the local agents of the little commissions they were getting.

This trend has been perceived for months and in fact a number of major travel agents have already closed shop. Local agents have been adversely hit as not only have their commission been drastically lowered but air fares in general have been greatly reduced. Of course the consumer does not see this reduction in air fares as this is “compensated” by massive taxes being added on and on, for which the travel agent does not receive a commission.

Air Malta’s chairman told travel agents to charge a handling fee in the same way that Air Malta will be doing from its sales shops. This handling fee is subject to VAT, which means that the consumer will see higher costs being added. This will certainly not help the local situation at all ,which has also seen a tremendous decrease in sales in the past two years as more and more Maltese are finding it difficult to find the necessary resources to travel.

Local travel agents, already badly hit by the whole situation, are very angry at what is happening and what they see as yet another attempt by Air Malta to take over as much of the sales as possible. In fact travel agents complained that Air Malta is also going after large corporate clients directly.

Mr Zammit said the move was inevitable and in line with what is happening abroad. However, local agents pointed out that while customers abroad have no choice but go to a local travel agent as the airline offices may be many kilometres away, the Air Malta offices are centrally located and within reach of everyone.