“This responds to the consumer demand for self-service by giving travellers easy access to helpful and accurate information about the essentials of travel—from what documents are required to what taxed must be paid,” said Giovanni Bisignani, IATA’s Director General and CEO.

At the time of booking, The IATA Travel Centre provides tailored information by itinerary on passport, visa and health requirements, as well as taxes at arriving and departing airports and consumer and currency regulations. The service is offered free of charge to individual travellers. Links to The IATA Travel Centre can be included on booking sites and in e-mail travel confirmations.

Travellers are responsible for having correct documentation with them. While most documentation problems are discovered at check-in, every year an estimated 35,000 travellers are turned back at destination or transfer points by immigration authorities due to improper documentation. The average fine for every passenger arriving or transiting without proper documentation is US$5,000. When combined with associated manpower costs, the annual expense to the industry is over US$200 million.

The Travel Centre builds on 40 years of expertise in providing travel documentation advice to airlines, travel agencies and passengers. It is based upon an enhanced version of IATA’s TIM/Timatic service which monitors and automatically updates passengers of changing regulatory requirements that will impact their travel plans. There are about 14,000 such changes recorded in the Timatic database each year. 

“The Travel Centre is the first of a number of initiatives IATA is driving to help the industry to improve service while reducing these costs,” said Bisignani.

To visit the IATA Travel Centre go to www.iatatravelcentre.com

- IATA -

IATA contact:                                                                           

Lorne Riley

IATA Corporate Communications

Tel +41 22 770 2967

Email: corpcomms@iata.org

Editors Notes:

 -  IATA has some 240 members comprising 94% of scheduled international traffic.

 -  A premium service is also offered to consumers for a nominal fee which will facilitate:

Personal profiles: Create and store personal profile, including previous queries for future ease-of-use. Running saved enquires is particularly useful when change alerts are received

Personalised alerts: Receive an email alert when country regulations changes may affect your travel plans.

Document expiry notification: Receive email notification when travel documents are due to expire.