BSP: will agencies need to “pay” often… for others?

The International Association of Air Transport (IATA) is toughening up.

To protect itself from payment failures, it decided to modify the frequency of payments.

The bankruptcy of the reservation website AirFastTickets last June was the tipping point.

The online agency incurred a 45 million euro loss in Greece, Germany, and England.

Germany is going to opt for bi-monthly payments in March 2015.

Spanish agencies will have to pay three times a month by next May and Portuguese payments will become weekly.

A frequency that could also be imposed in England, even if British Airways seems opposed to this change, according to information from the British website Travel Weekly.

So it is very probable for France, with current monthly payments, to also be affected, even though payment failures were more rare this year.

In fact, only 1.8 million unpaid euros were recorded between January and August in the France, versus 7 million euros in 2013.

On the other hand, the turnover suffered an important drop of 4.8% at the end of August.

All that is left to know is in what delays and how often French agencies will have to follow these new rules, because for some, such loans are vital to business survival.

Reducing delays will probably further weaken their situation.