KUALA LUMPUR: Beginning January 2011, travel agencies all over Malaysia will begin charging a consultation fee for producing the best personalised service for their clients.
The Malaysian Association of Tour and Travel Agents (MATTA) announced this at Wisma MATTA in Desa Perdana to reporters.
According to MATTA president Datuk Mohd Khalid Harun, the fee had been successfully implemented in other countries that had increased the level of service and quality.
“Over the years, airline commissions have declined, hotel’s internet booking have increased but we are still rendering free services to those who ask for quotations or tour packages even before they confirm their purchase with us,” he said.
Deputy president, John Tan, added that a lot of work was involved in compiling the quotation and the work could not be done for free anymore.
“Some corporate clients ask several companies for quotations because it is free and, at the end, only one receives the deal. This is not fair to us. So with this fee they will think twice before doing this. We are educating them,” he added.
Tan said all clients should decide on the destination, do a little groundwork and decide on their budget so a win-win situation could be found for both parties.
Khalid added that travel agents were now consultants with their expertise and strengths.
This fee structure has been configured by their Outbound committee.
The fee suggested by MATTA is merely a guideline and travel agents are free to change the price according to their service.
For frequent individual travelers, the charge is RM300 per quotation for both domestic and international travel, while corporate consultation fees are priced at RM200 per quotation for the first three quotations and RM500 per quotation for the fourth quotation onwards for both domestic and international travels.
“The fee will be absorbed as part of the payment if the client decides to purchase from the agency and one free revision will be given on the same quotation,” added Jeffri Sulaiman, vice president of MATTA Outbound.
Jeffri also said they would begin road shows around the country to disseminate the information to all their 2700 registered members.
Khalid added that if customers felt that they were unhappy with the services or the charges they were welcome to lodge complaints with MATTA.
For more information log on to www.matta.org.my or call 03-92876881.
Source - www.thestar.com.my
By Dr Pam Spurr
Last updated at 1:36 AM on 12th February 2010
Anybody meeting my client Anna for the first time would be forgiven for thinking she has a perfect life. She is 29, slim, attractive, well-educated and rapidly climbing the career ladder as a solicitor with a dynamic City firm.
Yet her whole demeanour is nothing more than a well-constructed facade.
Rather than spending her evenings at the latest fashionable restaurant or gossiping over cocktails at a trendy wine bar, Anna instead spends up to five hours a night on her laptop - obsessively tracking the lives of her ex-boyfriend, old friends and acquaintances and work colleagues.
Many people are attracted to leading a second 'life' on the internet
When she isn't glued to Facebook, Friends Reunited or blogs, she is trawling through gossip websites.
At weekends, when Anna has more time on her hands, it's not unusual for her to devote seven-hour sessions to her voyeuristic monitoring of people she is convinced are all leading more exciting and fulfilling lives than she is.
So, when I saw the Daily Mail report last week on new research linking addictive internet use with depression, I wasn't in the least bit surprised.
The study found that spending too long online can expose a 'dark side'. Those who didn't previously suffer from depression were made to feel gloomy and vulnerable, and those who did often logged off feeling worse.
Sadly, it confirmed a growing trend I've witnessed first-hand over the past ten years in my work as a life coach and agony aunt.
Because, in line with this research from the University of Leeds, I too have discovered that people slip into the murky realms of 'chasing' after a life - of sorts - by surfing the internet for longer and longer periods until it dominates their moods, behaviour and life.
There appears to be a direct relationship between spending more time online and feeling less happy about life, as well as an increased risk of addiction to the internet.
Let's be honest, though, when most of us think of the stereotypical sad and lonely person who gets addicted to surfing the net, we think of a geeky man who probably doesn't have refined social skills or a high 'desirability' rating. He seeks solace in vicarious thrills such as pornography or visiting tawdry chat rooms.
But, in my experience, the people who are falling victim to internet-led addiction and depression are smart, savvy, career women like Anna - and the damaging effects of spending increasing hours online are far more insidious than you can imagine.
Anna initially consulted me about a relationship issue - she'd been finding it hard to get over the man she called the 'love of her life', who'd broken up with her a year earlier.
It soon became obvious to me that she was spending too much time on the internet. She confessed that the more time she spent on social networking sites, the stronger her desire grew to keep up with how everyone else was spending their time.
With complete honesty, she said it seemed a darned sight more interesting and fun than what she was up to.
The irony was that she wasn't contacting these people but, instead, compulsively following them. Anna said she hadn't wanted go out with friends because she feared she'd bore them by droning on about her break-up.
Unfortunately, by isolating herself, she compounded the root of the problem, further damaging her fragile self-confidence.
The further irony is that you can never trust the way people depict their social lives on such sites.
Yet someone vulnerable like Anna will fall for it hook, line, and sinker.
Stalking ex-boyfriends and former friends on social networking sites such as Facebook is becoming increasingly common
You might think it extraordinary that she wasn't actually contacting people she knew - choosing to simply watch their lives play out across the pages of a site.
But this fits in with the pattern of emotional detachment that many who spend too much time on the internet begin to feel: that they're no longer part of this vibrant community and are increasingly isolated from real life.
Anna was also embarrassed about spending hours on celebrity gossip sites - previously she'd never even have considered buying a celebrity magazine. However, she found herself getting engrossed in various stories about the rich and famous.
What was the upshot of all this time spent on her laptop? I'll tell you - she was feeling even worse than after the initial break-up, and with a growing loneliness that she said she'd never experienced previously.
She described it as like an ever-increasing 'black hole' inside of her. The more she tried to fill it - by seeing what was happening in other people's lives - the bigger it grew. Yet Anna hated it when she couldn't spend as much time as she wanted to on these sites.
Like Anna, another client of mine, Ellen, a 42-year-old divorced, stay-athome mother of two young children, experienced feelings of withdrawal - anxiousness, panic and rising anger - when she was prevented from looking at sites she spent a tremendous amount of time on. (This was usually three or four hours non-stop during the day once she got the household chores done, and then logging on again for a few more hours once her children were tucked up.)
For instance, when one of her children was home with a prolonged case of flu in late autumn, constantly interrupting her computer time, Ellen became short tempered with him. She felt dreadful about it later.
Although she originally consulted me about developing the confidence to go back to work, her unhealthy obsession with the internet became the focus of our conversations.
Again, Ellen would strike you as a well-presented and elegant divorcee who probably had to fight off potential suitors - but nothing could be further from the truth.
Although she was fascinated by dating websites, she surfed only the profiles of single men, plus those of other single women who she saw as her 'rivals' - and rivals she felt ill-equipped to compete with.
This doubly damaged her chances of getting out to meet someone and building her confidence to get back to work. She even started to shy away from occasional invitations from old friends to meet a suitable single man they had in mind for her.
Ellen confessed that she'd panic, thinking there was no way they'd like her after the 'amazing women' she'd seen on singles sites.
When so many seemingly capable and sensible women are being sucked into a nightmare of prolonged internet surfing, it's hard not to conclude a serious problem is developing in our increasingly fractured society.
Another case in point is Sarah, 31, whose overuse of the internet started with that very sense of detachment from her normal group of friends, after moving cities for a promotion in the television industry.
Arriving in London having been based in Wales, Sarah was initially excited by the prospect of a new job in a new city. However, long working hours meant she was so shattered when occasionally she had time off, that she rarely took advantage and went back to Wales.
If you end up out of touch with your friends, and too busy to make new ones, it's all too easy to hunch over your laptop for hours at a time.
She found herself trawling fashion and social networking sites. She'd peek at what her old friends were getting up to, and also what her new colleagues were doing in their spare time - and felt incredibly lonely.
Then Sarah would hit the fashion websites and spend much of her salary on clothing. Of course, the brief high she got when new outfits arrived in the post disappeared as soon as she thought about the fact that she had nowhere to wear them.
Obviously, the internet has transformed the way we communicate and has some tremendous benefits, but it will never be a substitute for real relationships or for seeking face-to-face solace in difficult times.
The common thread linking these women was a set of circumstances that damaged their self-esteem and confidence in their own unique way.
For anyone who finds themselves in similar shoes, there's much you can do - as these women all eventually did - to halt a soul-destroying search for 'a life' on the internet.
The first thing is to reconnect with someone you trust and let them know you're lonely. Then it's important to start spending time with people you like. It may mean reconnecting with old friends or developing new friendships.
Either way, it's about recognising how much you've isolated yourself and how your journey back to being part of a social group - even a small one - will be your salvation.
The big stumbling point for many women who end up in a solitary world of the internet is to have the courage to go back to the drawing board and 'reboot' their lives not only socially, but by setting limits on the stresses they place on themselves.
When your days are a little less punishing, you're less likely to seek stress relief in some supposedly 'harmless' internet surfing. Only then will you realise a real life is always more rewarding than a virtual one.
Names have been changed.
** picture taken in Bali by yours truly
Tah DAH!!!! Coach and Radley... pix not so clear... please click on pix to enhance.. just incase you don't believe me...
hmmm.. the leather smell so good. I bought this online from someone who is located in the states. Yeah... around RM250... Can't get that price here in KL.
Closer shot... COACH.... Leather smells so nice... the leather is so supple... so nice so nice...
Radley purse in lilac. Its a small one but good enough to put my cards in there and coins... Smells wonderful too ( if you visited my other more public blog you would have seen this too) I am now looking for the same shade of lilac hand bag.. .anyone seen one???
