BCAA reducing travel services

The Penticton branch of BCAA will lose four people from their office after the company announced it is significantly scaling back its travel agency services.

“BCAA is not out of business. Our membership and our insurance business is still going strong and we intend to keep it that way, but with various things that are happening in the travel industry in general, not just with us, we just can’t keep going and make any money,” said Penticton branch manager Vaughn Denis. “Unfortunately the travel staff here, four of them, will basically be finished by Jan. 15.”

BCAA will continue to offer services to travel customers by phone, via its Burnaby-based customer contact centre, and online, via its travel booking services at www.bcaa.com. A total of 157 full-time and part-time positions have been eliminated throughout the province. BCAA will ensure all existing travel bookings are fulfilled and they will continue to accept travel bookings through the storefront locations until Nov. 28.

The reason for the cutback is a reflection of the change in the travel industry. Where 15 years ago all vacation and airline tickets were sold through travel agents, today most of these transactions are completed online.

“Cruselines, airlines and resorts are all trying to remain competitive in a very difficult market with the recession. Basically what they are doing is lowering their prices and reducing commissions that they normally would have paid travel agencies like BCAA. The combination has got to the point where we had to investigate every single avenue that we could possibly look at to try and stay in business and we couldn’t come up with an answer,” said Denis.

BCAA explored a range of options for continuing in-person travel planning and booking services for members and customers. This included approaching other travel providers to purchase BCAA’s travel operations, or forming an alliance to maintain a travel agency presence in the sales centres. An arrangement could not be reached.

While one service is scaling back, Denis said they will investigate other areas to expand as the membership is still growing.

“We are looking at the existing products — the house insurance, travel medical, life insurance— and we are also going to start commercial insurance for small businesses. This is something we have been looking at for years and we are now going to do,” said Denis.

As for the employees who have had their positions eliminated in Penticton and throughout the province, Denis said BCAA is committed to helping them find other work. He said job fairs, career counseling and talking to other travel suppliers trying to get placement for some of the laid-off workers in underway.

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