Travel Industry Council of Ontario Talks 2025: Trends, Challenges, and What’s Next

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Travel Industry Council of Ontario Talks 2025: Trends, Challenges, and What’s Next
Jen Mallia

by Jen Mallia
Last updated: 10:05 AM ET, Mon January 20, 2025

If you are a travel advisor in Ontario, you are likely familiar with the Travel Industry Council of Ontario (TICO). It’s the regulatory body for travel operators and agencies in the province, designated by the Ontario government to enforce legislation. When you wrote the exam to become licensed, it was a TICO certification. But certifying advisors is just one aspect of their work. 

TravelPulse Canada had the opportunity to sit down with Richard Smart, TICO President and CEO, and Kristina Wilson, Stakeholder Relations Manager, to talk about where things are headed as it launches into 2025. 

What’s on your mind going into 2025?

In terms of volatility, unpredictability, not just the travel marketplace, but the business climate as a whole. We find that hackers and scammers are using social media and other means at a faster pace or more significantly than they ever have. Particularly with artificial intelligence, they are more and more sophisticated. We blog fairly regularly about the perils of scammers and travel scams. If a deal looks too good to be true, then there’s a good chance it isn’t. We say to always call and talk to a person. You can go through our agency search feature and contact the travel agency or contact people before you book. 

Another aspect that’s consuming us, and I think almost every CEO in both countries, is what’s the economic impact to the travel industry going to be with all the geopolitical issues going on with tariffs that potentially start on Monday. The relationships between Canada and the U.S., we’re very concerned about that. Even though tariffs are applied to goods crossing the border, the impact on the broader economy, and what that means to upward of 2,000 licensed bodies selling travel in the province and thousands of travel advisors. There’s a real worry here for jobs and smaller agencies. 

We conducted value surveys in the fall, both of consumers and of our licensed bodies, and there’s concern about the ongoing business liability given the economic and political climate. I’m concerned both for those businesses, but also for consumers, if they’re booking travel, what happens if there’s a recession and businesses start to close, if bankruptcy starts to pick up? It’s a genuine worry for us. Nobody’s got that crystal ball to see what’s going to happen. 

Those are two things on my mind in terms of going forward.

What is TICO working on in the coming year?

So in terms of looking inward at TICO, we’ll be working on our registry toolkit. It’s a resource that shares a consumer protection message that agents can pass along to their clients. There’s brochures in 16 different languages, social media content and a variety of different tools. We did focus groups in the fall with industry about how we can enhance that. Right now, we’re working through those changes, and want new materials, probably in the next two months or so. So that’s certainly something that will come about. 

Also, TICO received recommendations from the Auditor General about a year ago, and really focused on improving our processes, our reporting, our data capabilities. Many of those changes are underway now. There was also a recommendation to the Ontario government — as you’ll remember, the Ontario government sets rules as the Travel Industry Act and TICO enforces it — to have a look at the legislation, which is something that is with the government. We’re waiting to see whether any changes or consultations will come forward. And so that could be potentially something on the radar this year.

Could you explain more about the Auditor General’s report?

The Auditor General is a non-partisan government body that comes in and conducts a value for money audit. So what they’re really saying is, how can we make the operation more efficient and provide more value to the constituents that we serve. We welcomed it. It’s basically a road map. It’s “what do you need to do to be better?” We were committed to all the recommendations in that AG Report. We’re close to halfway through them. We put a quarterly progress report out. On our website we have, in easy, readable English, what we’ve accomplished so far. We’re quite proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish so far. In 2025, we’ll move through the majority of the other recommendations.


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