The Association of Retail Travel Agents has asked Travelport to delay to Feb. 1 from Jan. 1 its new Agility program,

which requires agencies to pay $35 per workstation per month to access a suite of functions, including some that previously were included in Travelport's base agency agreements. "Travelport's move appears to ARTA as the first major fundamental shift in a mandatory agent-pay model, particularly because the Agility suite is largely composed of heretofore no-fee tools, without which few agencies would be able to function," according to ARTA. The organization said such tools include queues, profiles, back-office interface records and bridging (used by after-hours services). "Furthermore, if agents accept the Agility suite terms and download the required software, users may be unwittingly updating their Travelport platforms to accommodate future pay-to-use features and/or be unable to return to a previous platform environment," according to a press statement. "ARTA feels that this volley by Travelport may be the thin edge of the wedge in a strategy to begin a major transition of GDS costs away from travel suppliers and onto the backs of travel agents." The Beat last week reported that corporate travel agency executives were not pleased with the move, despite Travelport's argument that the platform gives agencies new revenue-generating and cost-saving opportunities that outweigh the new fees. A hotel commission program and a new graphical user interface are among the included components. "ARTA is equally concerned about the manner and timing of Travelport's announcement to subscribers," the organization wrote. "Most agencies did not receive official notice until some point during the first week of December 2011, many getting the notice on Dec. 6. With less than a month extended to evaluate and understand the impact of the Agility suite, and given the fact that the December holiday season may already have key agency decision makers out of the office, the timing of Travelport's announcement seems calculated, if not entirely unfair."