The retail travel sector – and travellers – has come to accept airline fuel surcharges as a necessary evil, as unpredictable fuel costs can create havoc for a carrier’s bottom line.
Fuel surcharges levied by tour operators, on the other hand, brings more scrutiny, especially when the surcharge amounts varied from tour op to tour op, even in cases where companies were using the same plane to get travellers to the same destination.
The headline for this edition of ‘It Happened This Week’ is: ‘Travel agents, consumers growing more vocal about fuel surcharge amounts’
As Travelweek reported, both retail agents and consumers were becoming increasingly skeptical about the fuel surcharges imposed by tour operators.
Provincial ACTA chapters were taking action. ACTA Quebec’s then-VP, Claude Dumont, said he was planning to contact the National Transportation Agency to see if the tour op surcharges were justified. “We are wondering why different operators using the same plane to the same destination have different fuel surcharges,” Dumont told Travelweek.
And ACTA-Ontario’s then-executive director Marion Graber had written to ACTA National’s then-aviation chairman Bill Maguire to see if the exact effect of increasing fuel costs could be determined.
As Graber put it, “a lot of people are wondering if a $96 per person fuel surcharge to Puerto Vallarta is for real.”
Meanwhile one industry insider argued that the tour ops weren’t making money on the fuel surcharges, but couldn’t agree on a common policy because that would be in violation of Canada’s competition laws.
Did the headline appear in Travelweek in 1980, 1990 or 2000?
Here’s a hint: This story ran just a few months after the start of the Gulf War, when oil prices were soaring.
Fill out the contest form below, with your guess and your email address. We’ll announce the answer and the winner next week, along with the next contest headline. Last week’s contest headline about Costco Travel’s alleged extreme rebating ran in November 2018. Our winner for Week #40 is Donald Wenzak with Travelmart West in Edmonton, AB. Congratulations Donald!
Every Wednesday in Travelweek Daily, we’re posting an article from Travelweek’s archives, spanning the years 1973 – 2023. Guess the correct year the story ran, and you could win a $50 Amazon gift card. There’s a new headline and a new chance to win every single week.
