As an ex travel agent, heres one simple question....Would you work for free? Answer is more than likely to be no, so if you have a customer that comes in to your shop wanting to fly to a ryanair destination, you have checked all other alternatives, made phone calls and the only choice left is ryanair, the customer has no personal internet access and wishes you to book the flight for them, would you do it for free after spending all that time with them? or would you charge a nominal fee?
Obviously on this occasion we dont know the ins and outs of the booking, the fee seems quite high, which may be a bit naughty, however where I was the same small fee applied not only to FR but to EZY, Baby, BE or any other carrier that doesnt pay agents anything, when explained to customers they're usually happy to pay for it as it saves them a lot of hassle, the agency i used to work for (one of big 3) put a complete stop to FR bookings across the company after MOL's rant last year, very suprised this agency didnt as well.
On the flip side if your a good enough travel agent you should be able to add on some other bits and bobs to up your commision, for example hotels, currency, car hire, attraction tickets, insurance etc...
Maybe MOL should take the example of EZY and try to work with these agencies, surely the more options for passangers to book their flights the better?
Its a bit off topic but as GOLDENEYE says a travel agency/tour op issue and not airline, but thought i'd just put my 2 pennies worth in, all the best TCX thread.
