New Delhi : Both travel agents and airlines have agreed recently to cut the transaction fee. While agents want to return to the old commission system under which they got Rs 5% of basic fare, airlines want the current fee Rs 350-500 for domestic and Rs 1,200-10,000 for each international ticket to be drastically reduced to reasonable levels. Whoever wins, the passenger will be paying much less booking charges.

The 2,000-agents strong Travel Agents Association of India (TAAI) had a marathon eight-hour-long meeting of key members. “The transaction fee in its current form is unacceptable to us as airlines have not met our demands like parity of fares and giving our share at the time of sale and not after a month. We will agitate to get remuneration from airlines. Agents who have not signed this new system’s agreement with airlines will be free to charge any mutually acceptable amount from customers,” TAAI president Rajinder Rai said after the meet. With most agencies now charging less, it will be difficult even for agents those who signed this agreement with airlines to stick to the steep fee structures. Among full service Indian carriers, Air India and Jet had started levying the same fees on tickets sold by them directly so as not to undercut agents’ business but Kingfisher did not do so.