In a bid to protect the travel trade group, the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) and the National Association of Nigeria Travel Agencies (NANTA) have signed a landmark agreement to safeguard the interests of travellers and travel trade operators in Nigeria.
The two-year partnership, a first-of-its-kind between FCCPC and a trade group in the country, aims to address unfair operational trade practices prevalent in the travel industry.
The agreement is renewable and subject to meeting specific performance metrics. Both the FCCPC and NANTA had a few months ago expressed concern about the many of the tickets to fly in the country’s market that are generated outside the shores of the country popularly described as Sold Outside Ticket Outside (SOTO) or Sold Outside and Ticketed Inside (SOTI) even though international carriers have all released their lower tickets inventories for the Nigerian market.
They are equally concerned about the trend where foreign and domestic airlines have ticket sales points beyond the airports; a situation they said has encroached negatively on the business of travel agents in Nigeria.
They described the cross-border trading of foreign airline inventories, which has impacted Nigeria’s travel economy as a monster that must be tackled frontally and destroyed.