Latest news with #ticketing
Travel Weekly
3 days ago
- Business
- Travel Weekly
Be wary when issuing air tickets for others
Mark Pestronk Q: We have been approached by an agency whose ARC appointment has been terminated by ARC for financial default. The terminated agency wants to send reservation records to us for ticketing. Leaving aside for the moment important questions of whether we can trust the terminated agency, aren't we prohibited by ARC rules from issuing such tickets? We have also recently been approached by another agency that has an ARC appointment in good standing but whose right to issue tickets on a major carrier has been terminated by that carrier. Aren't we prohibited by ARC or the carrier's rules from issuing tickets on that carrier for that agency? A: ARC's standard agreement -- called the Agent Reporting Agreement (ARA) -- used to have a clause that prohibited an appointed agency from selling tickets for a nonappointed agency. The same clause also prohibited an appointed agency from issuing tickets for another agency, even an ARC-appointed one, that had its ticketing authority withdrawn. Perhaps recognizing that such prohibitions raised antitrust law concerns about group boycotts, the ARA dropped the clause in its major revisions to the ARA a dozen years ago. Today there no relevant prohibitions, so ARC allows you to ticket for a nonappointed agency or an agency that lacks a carrier's appointment. However, separately from ARC's rules, every carrier has the right to decide which agencies it will appoint and which it will not. Further, a carrier may condition its appointment on your compliance with the carrier's own rules. As far as I know, the only carrier with an extensive set of rules for agencies is American Airlines, which makes every ARC agency agree to its 9,500-word Addendum to Governing Travel Agency Agreements. The addendum is actually a separate agreement between American and each agency. Section 7 of the American addendum, titled Abusive Practices, states: "Agent agrees not to facilitate or enable the promotion, sourcing, servicing or booking of American products and services by third parties who are not authorized American agents because of suspension or termination, including through the use of pseudo city codes used by or lent to or set up for such a third party, unless expressly authorized to do so by American." So you can't "facilitate" booking by an agency that has lost its American Airlines appointment. If American finds that you have done so, you could lose your right to issue tickets on that airline. Individual airline appointments of agencies are unilateral agency appointments, which means that the carrier can withdraw its appointment for any reason, or no reason, at any time. Therefore, even if a carrier has no formal addendum like American does, it can still terminate your authority to issue tickets if it finds that you are ticketing for another agency that is not authorized to issue tickets on that carrier. If you operate a host agency or simply issue tickets for other agencies on a particular carrier, you should be wary of ticketing for hostees or other agencies that you know or suspect have lost their authority to ticket on that carrier.
South China Morning Post
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- South China Morning Post
Presale tickets for G.E.M. concert in Hong Kong gone in just over an hour
Presale tickets for Hong Kong singer Gloria Tang Tsz-kei were snapped up in just over an hour, with nearly 120,000 Hongkongers at one point vying to see the artist also known as G.E.M and dubbed 'China's Taylor Swift'. A Post reporter who visited the Klook app at Wednesday, when ticket sales opened, observed that there was a queue of over 24,000 people waiting to buy tickets to the second edition of Tang's 'I AM GLORIA' world tour. Less than five minutes later, the number of people waiting jumped to over 90,000, and shortly thereafter peaked at around 119,900. At around 12.40pm, the Post reporter was brought to the page to purchase tickets and given ten minutes to confirm the transaction. While some stand tickets and bundles were listed as available, the reporter was unable to progress to the payment option. 'Some tickets are on hold. If they are not paid for in time, they might become available again,' a notice on the Klook app said when the reporter tried to purchase a ticket. The reporter was then removed from the purchasing window and placed at the end of the queue. Shortly after 1pm, Klook said that all tickets for the event were sold out.
BBC News
22-06-2025
- Business
- BBC News
Premier League contact Chelsea over Boehly ticket website
The Premier League have written to Chelsea to seek clarification over the club's position with ticket re-sellers - amid controversy over Todd Boehly's involvement in Vivid Seats. Boehly is both a director and investor in Vivid, described as an "unauthorised ticket seller" by the league, and also owns a 13% stake in Chelsea. The website lists Chelsea matches on its platform, with some tickets last season at Stamford Bridge going for as much as £20,000. It is not allowed to operate in the United Kingdom, although is permissible overseas. Chelsea Supporters' Trust asked the Premier League to "act and investigate" the situation which they believe is both a "breach of trust and "a clear conflict of interest" in an open letter issued in March. Premier League CEO Richard Masters has explained they are discussing the matter with Chelsea in a situation described as "ongoing" at a Football Supporters' Association event last week. The Supporters' Trust has also submitted evidence against the American company to the government's Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS).Boehly, Chelsea and Vivid have been contacted for further comment. Vivid CEO Stanley Chia is quoted by Sportico , externalas saying "economic and political volatility" has impacted the ticketing market as the company's share price fell by 61% this have recently pledged to take action on ticket touting, although without naming Vivid or other ticket re-sellers, which the CST letter said it was "encouraged" by. There have been concerns about a "flat" atmosphere at Stamford Bridge, highlighted by previous manager Mauricio Pochettino and echoed by current head coach Enzo Maresca at times last season, amid trials of a singing section in the Conference are currently participating in the Club World Cup in the United States and next face ES Tunis in Philadelphia on Tuesday night.
Telegraph
20-06-2025
- Business
- Telegraph
Trainline sues Transport Secretary over ‘secret' deal for state-owned rail operator
Trainline is suing Heidi Alexander, the Transport Secretary, over the alleged backdoor award of a £32m ticketing contract by state-owned operator LNER. LNER, which has been run by the Department for Transport (DfT) since 2018, recently extended a ticketing sales platform contract it uses without offering rivals such as Trainline the chance to bid for the 10-year deal. Trainline claims that the failure to seek alternative bids means that Ms Alexander and LNER ignored due process as well as the best interests of passengers and the taxpayer. It alleges that the publication of the award on the Government's procurement website on December 23 was also too opaque because it effectively buried the news during Christmas week, limiting the ability of other parties to respond. LNER awarded the contract for the central booking engine that supports its digital ticket sales to Australia's Vix Technology. Trainline has its own rival division providing a similar 'white label' service to train operators and would have expected to compete for the work had it been tendered. It is understood that the company, which has filed the claim at the Technology and Construction Court against LNER and the Transport Secretary, will claim that a direct award of the contract was not permissible under procurement law because the terms were being varied in scope, duration and beneficiaries. The terms of the award also mean that the ticketing platform used by LNER, which operates between London Kings Cross and Scotland via Leeds and Newcastle, could be extended across the rail network. Rail unions have pressed Labour to squeeze out third-party ticket bookers such as Trainline, with the RMT accusing the company of engaging in 'relentless profiteering.' While the Government plans to simplify fares and ticketing as part of its nationalisation of the railway, it has nevertheless said that there would still be a need for 'an innovative and competitive third-party retail market.' Trainline even hosted the launch of the nationalisation policy by Louise Haigh, the then-transport secretary, last year. Labour subsequently ruled out establishing a national website and app to promote cheaper fares in competition with the firm. However, it reversed that guidance in January to say that a plan to bring together the ticket websites of individual operators was now in the pipeline. Though the DfT maintained that private-sector retailers would be able to compete in an open and fair manner, shares of Trainline, which has 18m customers, have since fallen by almost one third.
The Independent
18-06-2025
- The Independent
The Platform Trap: Mallorca makes life miserable for the unsuspecting rail passenger
Other people's public transport is usually fun to unravel. So far this month I have variously been assured on some buses in Lithuania and Poland that I must get a ticket in advance; on others, I had to pay the driver. Some buses were cash only, others insisted on payment by card (or phone). Flying on from Warsaw to Palma, the driver of the airport bus into town needed €5 in cash – but at least she could sell tickets, unlike increasingly many airport bus services (Lodz in Poland, for example). But last Wednesday evening, I fell foul of the Kafkaesque ticketing trap devised by Mallorca 's otherwise excellent public transport network. The island's railway – a train line running north from Palma – has improved by leaps and bounds over the years. It is now a metro, with smart air-conditioned trains as frequently as every 10 minutes. But unlike any other such system I have seen, each platform is a stand-alone entity. You can access the platform only by an automatic gate, and – as I discovered to my discomfort – you cannot cross from one platform to the other without exiting the automatic gate. So what's wrong with that? Well, at a small station seven stops from central Palma, Pont d'Inca Nou, I bought a ticket at the entrance to platform 1 for a train that was departing from platform 2. When I say 'ticket', it was just a paper receipt with a QR code, which I duly scanned. The gates allowed me onto platform 1. Where, I wondered, was the bridge, subway or street-level walkway that would allow me to cross to platform 2 to catch the Palma train that was due to arrive in two minutes? Every railway I have ever used allows you to do that... except in Mallorca. But there is nothing to indicate the unusual arrangement. Indeed, I was able to buy a ticket to the island's capital from the wrong side of the station and go through the gates to a platform from which trains are travelling away from Palma. Whoever programmed the whole thing presumably knew they were dispatching unknowing passengers into a transportational black hole where the normal laws of travel physics cease to exist. No, you cannot retrace your steps because the machine has already checked you out of Pont d'Inca Nou. The only permitted journey is down to Palma, but you are trapped on a platform from which the only way is up. And yes, I did check out the fences: they are Iron Curtain grade. All I could do was catch the next northbound train – immediately placing me at risk of a penalty, because I was going in the opposite direction – and hope a more normal arrangement prevailed at the next stop. It did not. I was unable to cross to the southbound track without exiting through the gate, which was never going to let me through because my ticket was not valid. So I tailgated another passenger, and followed her over the pedestrian crossing that is unhelpfully located outside Stalag Platform 1, as I now knew it. As luck would have it, she had evidently overshot her station, and was heading for Platform 2. So I was able to tailgate her again (of which she was probably getting fed up). No ticket examiner appeared in the two minutes the train took to trundle to my original station, from where I was finally travelling legally. Should you have the good fortune to find yourself in Mallorca, please do not follow in my tailgating, ticket-bending footsteps. And to TIB, the public transport provider, I say: put up signs saying 'Abandon hope, all ye who enter here'. There is a serious point: an excellent way to cut traffic congestion in Mallorca is to encourage more rail use. But that will only happen if holidaymakers feel confident about using the trains.
