These are backing TAANZ Accreditation as a frontline defence against booking scams, requiring airlines to communicate passenger rights in plain language, and preserving travel businesses’ ability to recover card payment costs.
New Zealanders lost close to $3 billion to scams last year nearly 0.75% of GDP — with shopping scams, the category travel bookings fall within, now accounting for half of all reported cases. TAANZ says AI-generated fake booking sites and deepfaked voice and video calls are accelerating the threat, and is calling on government to actively promote TAANZ Accreditation as New Zealand’s verified mark of trust, through public awareness campaigns, procurement preference for accredited agents, and referral from agencies such as Netsafe and CERT NZ.
‘Accredited travel advisors are the one signal a fraudster cannot fake,’ says Julie White, chief executive of TAANZ. ‘As AI makes scams harder to spot, Government has an opportunity and a responsibility to point New Zealanders toward the advisors who are already regulated, bonded and accountable.’
TAANZ is asking incoming MPs to commit to a New Zealand Aviation Consumer Charter, modelled on Australia’s Aviation Customer Rights Charter, requiring airlines to proactively explain passengers’ rights in plain language at the point of disruption. Travellers’ rights currently sit across three overlapping regimes – the Civil Aviation Act 2023, the Consumer Guarantees Act, and the Montreal Convention – and TAANZ says the confusion is routinely left for travel advisors to untangle on airlines’ behalf, at the point of maximum traveller stress.
‘This isn’t about new compensation entitlements, it’s about clarity,’ says White. ‘Airlines set the fare rules and hold the funds, so airlines should be the ones explaining passengers’ rights, not leaving advisors to do it for them.’
Exempt travel from surcharge ban, says TAANZ
As the Retail Payment System (Ban on Merchant Surcharges) Amendment Bill returns to Parliament, TAANZ is calling for a permanent, explicit travel-sector exemption covering both in-store and online bookings. Travel is routinely booked up to three years ahead of departure, locking in card processing costs, currency exposure and chargeback liability over a far longer window than any other retail sector. TAANZ warns that without the ability to recover these costs, smaller agencies risk losing merchant terminal access altogether with the cost ultimately passed on to consumers through higher fares.
