I live in Toronto, Canada. In the Province of Ontario (our state equivalent), there is a governing body called the Travel Industry Council that requires anyone who is an accommodations booker (has their own website advertising and enabling travel booking) to register with them. Their goal is to ensure the travel booking public is not scammed by bad actors/operators (not a bad goal).
The challenge for us is that their registration process is costly and onerous.
- Just to start, its a $3000 non-refundable payment simply to review the application.
- Then, a $10,000 surety will be held by them for up to 2 years to ensure good operations
- Trust accounting must be set up and the Travel Council must be set up for visibility on the accounts
- Other assorted requirements https://tico.ca/travel-professionals/registration-information/overview-requirements.html
Since there are not as many robust channels for advertising direct bookings in Canada anyway, in concert with the rules above, this makes Direct sort of an undesirable play. As a result, we have been reluctant to set anything up in that regard from a software perspective.
Just wondering if this a unique scenario or a common one others encounter as well.