The National Vice President of the National Association of Nigerian Travel Agencies (NANTA), Lagos Zone, and one of the candidates vying for the position of national president of NANTA in the 2024 general election of the association coming up in April this year, Mr. Yinka Folami has said the travel agencies’ body will address the issue of discriminatory airfares practice against Nigerians by some foreign airlines if elected president of the association.
He said discussions on the issue were already on and that it would be resolved. His words: “Yes, we are addressing that. I told you that I am just coming from a consumer protection programme. I am just coming from a workshop on that and those issues are being addressed. Those are honestly part of the issues we will address. When your business is being challenged, it will stretch you to address the fundamentals of the business, and that is a fundamental issue before us. And as far as I am concerned, it is discriminatory. I understand consumer protection because I come from that background.
“A lot of people are very sceptical about consumer protection, but I know because I know it is backed by law. I know that there are a lot of problems that are tied around it in Nigeria that have been decided long ago in other climes. In Europe, in America, they have been decided. For example, like you and I are travel agents, in our approach to the market, there are certain things that we must not do, because I read, and I try to escalate conversations from the position of knowledge. These issues have been long decided in other climes, and why were they decided? Because people raised issues.”
Folami also promised equal opportunity to NANTA members old and young if elected president. Folami made this promise in a chat with Africa Travel Herald while speaking on his ambition to vie for NANTA’s top job. He said: “One promise that I am making to them is that we will create equal opportunities for all. Because of the way the sector is presently structured, it does not accommodate some people. It is like the door has been shut or closed. I can explain further: it is like rather than going into the process of consolidation, we are going into a process of domination. In any society that does not nurture growth opportunities, the younger ones would not have that opportunity to grow. I am not speaking fancy now; I am just speaking plain fact. If you have a community in which the younger ones don’t have the opportunity to grow, they are stifled growth completely. And they are stifling innovation. On the other hand, when you allow them to grow, they will grow the market, and when they grow the market, everybody will benefit from that growth. It is a win-win for everybody. Unfortunately, we are too jittery, we are too strategic driven and we don’t see the bigger picture. If we let them go, somebody else would take them from us, and take our market from us. That is just the truth.”
Folami explained that the travel market is very vulnerable because many tickets are sold outside the travel agencies. He said operators needed to come together and speak with one voice, big and small players, old and young.