Travel News published a series of articles over the last few weeks about the Locked in South Africa (#LISA group) and its relationship with South African travel agents. #LISA, which was initially founded during lockdown, with the intention of assisting South Africans to fight for their constitutional right to leave the country, became a popular source of repatriation flight information for travellers during that time. #LISA’s founder, Beverley Schäfer, recently announced that the group would close and allow travel agents to take back international flight bookings.
But the travel community remains outraged by the anti-agent sentiments that were shared by individual #LISA group co-ordinators, who now appear to be forging ahead with new, individually branded travel advisory groups, despite their founder’s instruction that the groups were to be closed down and that it was never the intention of #LISA to compete with the travel agent community. Owner/manager of XL HalloWorld Travel, Linda Wattrus, responds to these developments in a Letter to the Editor.
My name is Linda Wattrus and I have been a travel agent for 29 years, and owned my own agency for 21 of those years. In recent months, our community found itself faced with a new animal in the form repatriations. It quickly became clear that our community would be #strongertogether, and social platforms like Open Jaw, WhatsApp and Telegram saw us do just that; we’ve been sharing our knowledge and working as a country-wide collective team. Where there was once competition, there was suddenly a community with a sense of togetherness that has evolved, dare I say, into a real family.
Step in #LISA. Word count and time being a challenge I am unable to detail the myriad gaffes made by this group that many believe was politically motivated. I accept there may have been travel agents with exploitative behaviour, but to paint us all with the same brush publicly was obscene and deserves, at the absolute least, a public apology from the group co-ordinators who made such slanderous accusations. There are several points in the LISA group calls it a day article that I am itching to argue, but space and time do not permit now.
The bottom line of the #LISA debacle is that their social media communications were littered with disinformation and, at times, utter inappropriate communications to their followers. For me it was like watching a horror movie; I personally witnessed the unsuspecting prey being herded into the fold as I sat helpless and watched, cringing and covering my eyes. Generally, agents were rendered helpless; when we could stand it no longer and tried to provide true information, we were promptly excommunicated. Many of us were on these groups because there was initially, some useful information that we needed to help our own customers. #LISA’s blatant defamation of our trade is a stark manifestation of the ignorance and disrespect that the #LISA ‘volunteers’ have for our industry. They do not have the foggiest idea about the level of qualifications, expertise, experience, infrastructure, complexities and inherent traits needed to be a professional travel adviser. Now let me be clear – our issue is not that #LISA was formed; our industry is fundamentally based on synergic relationships, hence our embrace of the same. We could have been their best friends, but rather than harness our collective expertise they chose to insult every single one of us, and we took it personally! That is the crux of the matter.
It is chilling that people with no industry credentials, no qualifications, no statutory company registrations and no industry licensing could simply start a social media movement and take hundreds of thousands of rands from thousands of imprudent, desperate travellers. This is not a new lesson though. We have known forever that anyone can simply open a travel service and start selling to the public. An unregulated industry means that there is no firewall against unscrupulous or inept individuals or groups posing as travel experts. On the back of this #LISA debacle, it is clear to me that the time is ripe for our industry to be formally regulated in South Africa. Regulating may be a pain, but ultimately it is there to protect the public and also the reputation of an industry. Asata needs to get this done, and get it done now.