TORONTO — Social media can make your marketing dreams come true, connect you with new clients, showcase your travels to your followers and so much more. The flip side of social media’s incredible reach? More and more travellers are learning about air booking hacks. For any agent who’s ever received an airline debit memo for a client’s skiplagging, that’s not good news at all.
Skiplagging is the term most popular on social media platforms like TikTok, but you may know it as ‘hidden city booking’ – when travellers book a multi-city itinerary that’s cheaper than their intended routing, and never use one portion of the ticket. Travel agents have known about hidden city booking and skiplagging for decades. Savvy frequent fliers knew too.
Now with the reach of social media – and as the cost of airfare climbs ever higher – the average air traveller is hearing about a seemingly secret way to save money on airfare. But for travellers booking this way through a travel agent, it’s the agency’s bottom line that can get dinged, with an airline debit memo. It’s an increasingly troublesome issue for retailers, says World Travel Agents Associations Alliance (WTAAA) Executive Director Otto de Vries.
“Skiplagging is a long-standing issue in the travel industry that we do not support, but travel agents cannot control customer behaviour once travel is underway,” says de Vries. “While airlines have filed unsuccessful legal cases against consumers who skiplag, the.