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As rampant activities of fake travel agents deal severe blows to Nigeria’s travel industry by undermining credibility and defrauding unsuspecting customers, the Association of Nigerian Travel Agencies (NANTA) has said that the time is ripe for a total clampdown on their nefarious activities.
Mustapha Mohammed, the Public Relations Officer, National Association of Nigerian Travel Agents (NANTA), northern zone,, while harping on the need for urgent intervention, disclosed that NANTA is rolling out stricter enforcement measures, enhanced member verification and aggressive public sensitisation to protect travellers. He vowed the association will not relent, setting a 24-month target to significantly expand membership and decisively stamp out fraudulent agents across the sector.
Mohammed will be vying for the position of Deputy President at the association’s forthcoming Annual General Meeting (AGM) and 50th anniversary celebration in Ibadan later this month.
Speaking with journalists in Lagos, he outlined plans to drive NANTA’s public outreach, strengthen after-sales service, and maximise the association’s training school to upskill members.
He pledged to double active membership by the next AGM while intensifying the crackdown on quack operators blamed for tarnishing the industry’s image. He also promised to expose members to airline incentives many are currently missing, stressing that his leadership will be strictly merit-driven, with zero tolerance for gender bias.
My core mandate
The idea about NANTA is to galvanise support, to project and make the public aware of our presence. In the past, we have been like a shadow. We operate through technology. We operate using telephones. We hardly even see our customers. Sometimes, most of us can stay in the office for a month without anybody coming to visit us. We always work remotely, but now we want the general public to know that we are back and we are trying to reclaim our market and our image. So, one of the key things I want to focus on is supporting the president by advocating for NANTA
The current administration has done a lot of advocacy, which I believe we can fine-tune in order to ensure that our people are seen in a good light and that the general public is aware that we are no longer the kind of travel agents who stay away from the public glare.
We want to come out and show people that we are here, we are back, and we want to do everything necessary to make our association greater so that our members benefit far more than they currently do. For example, many people now purchase tickets online, but they lack after-sales service. We will reassure the general public that we are ready to offer after-sales service. We are available 24 hours a day to cater to the needs of our customers. We will, as much as possible, educate our members on how to stay on top of their customer relations at all times.
Visa processing
About the issue of members struggling with modern visa processing and the specific plan for the next 24 months: one of the key factors for success is having knowledgeable and experienced members, because it helps you grow your business. NANTA has successfully registered a training school, but the major task now is to encourage members to embrace that initiative by showing them how important it is to be well-informed in what they do.
When it comes to visa processing, I consider it a peripheral aspect of our role, because visas are entirely at the discretion of the countries for which people are seeking entry. However, a travel agent should know when something has impacted a customer’s journey and inform them well ahead of time. We have many training tools available, and the Global Distribution System also has products to help us stay on top of our businesses. If anything affects a customer’s journey, before it begins, during, or near the end, we should be the first to know, so we can warn or inform them and reduce negative experiences. When passengers encounter problems at the counter, the first thing they think is that the travel agent is incompetent. That is not the case.
Part of the training we want to instill in our people is self-awareness as business professionals, and an understanding that the most important element in our business is not our principals which are the airlines but our customers, whom we serve as intermediaries between them and those airlines.
It is my hope that I will carry this campaign zone by zone, working with the Vice Presidents of each zone and attending their meetings, always reminding people why we train: because we are travel agents, we must be professionals, and we must be on top of our game. We have the ability to win business back from online platforms. We have that ability. We just need to channel it properly and bring our ideas down to the grassroots level. In my region, at every meeting we hold, we spend 10 to 15 minutes reminding members about key aspects of our business, things relating to IATA, our relationships with customers, our dealings with airlines, and current developments in the travel industry.
Quackery
You cannot imagine the damage these quacks have done to our business. I cannot quantify it in figures, but I can tell you it goes beyond money; it has affected us emotionally and it is genuinely draining. However, we are putting measures in place. Once we sustain the advocacy and encourage our members to deepen their knowledge, these problems will begin to disappear, because quacks will find it impossible to operate in an environment where there is a code of conduct being actively upheld. The general public will help us eradicate them, because they will no longer settle for anything less than knowledgeable and well-equipped travel agents.
Among the numerous members of NANTA, membership numbers grow day by day, but perhaps because the executives at both the zonal and national levels have been somewhat distant from the general membership, there is little distinction between inactive members and the so-called quacks we talk about.
What I intend to bring to the table is to ensure that, by the next AGM, the number of recognised and financial members of NANTA using the existing directory, not even seeking new members, is doubled. I intend to go door to door, zone by zone, to engage members who either feel they are above it or feel that NANTA is not doing enough for them, and bring them back into the fold.
Doing so will create an identity, something this administration has already worked toward by launching the NNANTA platform, through which members can now pay their subscriptions and request ID cards. This is giving Nanta the opportunity to establish a verifiable identity that did not exist before. Our journey has been significant. We have seen how these quacks have dealt a blow to our prestige and image. We are ready to fight back. In the next 12 to 24 months, I will sit for this interview again and tell you that we have succeeded in eradicating that problem, because we want to clean up the directory. We want every member already registered on our platform to become active. That way, there will be no room for any quacks.
Gender inequality
NANTA has never been and will never be defined by gender. We respect one another because, before we were NANTA leaders or even NANTA members, we were business people. When we go out to conduct business, we do not go as men or women, we go as professionals who want to grow and succeed. I believe NANTA has never been and will never be gender-biased. Two adults are out to prove what they can do, and the only thing that should matter is what they can offer. It has never been about gender. We have supported female presidents and male presidents alike. My zone has done the same. I am seeking the same support that we have always extended, and I am seeking it from both male and female members of NANTA.
My coming on board is about bringing tangible gains to our members. We will engage with airlines. We will engage with GDSs. There are many benefits that our members are currently not enjoying, and we will work together to unlock them.
Service charge and commissions
We have also developed a programme to help travel agents introduce and justify service charges and we are working to improve our after-sales service to the point where a customer asleep at home receives a call from us saying their flight has been delayed by three hours, so they need not rush to the airport. Once the public begins to experience this level of service, it becomes much easier to navigate the competitive landscape.
On the matter of airline commissions, some airlines do not pay commission, but this is not unique to Nigeria. It is a global reality. However, those airlines offer other incentives, and many of our members are either unaware of them or have not yet reached the activity levels required to access them. We will work together to pursue those incentives and sit with the airlines to enhance them. It is not a win-lose situation; it is a win-win. The narrative will change, and our members will be much better off because we know how to relate with the airlines, and we will find a way forward together.
