I was pleased to receive advice this morning from the ACCC that Adventium Technology Group Pty Ltd has now paid out $6.5 million to about 350 tour operators in this country, including those in the Whitsundays I went in to bat for.

During all the trials that the tourism industry was facing as the COVID-19 pandemic hit, I was disgusted to learn that Adventium, a foreign booking agent, was holding onto holiday booking money which should have gone to small tour operators.

The ACCC investigated after I raised these concerns with them, and this morning the ACCC has advised me that Adventium has now finalised all those outstanding payments.

This morning I will be imploring the Prime Minister to ensure that this kind of thing doesn’t happen again, where we have a foreign online booking agent essentially holding mum and dad tourism operators to ransom.

There needs to be substantial reform in this area.

We need to see transparency around online booking agent commissions, and consideration of both caps on commissions that can be charged, as well as a time-limit on when these commissions are paid to tour operators.

Foreign booking agents can’t sit around holding on to $6.5 million for a year.

The whole thing needs to be looked at, because there are foreigners leveraging off Australian mum and dad businesses and they don’t provide any benefit to this country.

They’re just milking money out of our tourism industry.

ACCC release: https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/adventium-pays-around-65-million-in-withheld-payments-to-australian-tour-operators