VANCOUVER — Failure to find a partner for BCAA Travel has led parent company BCAA to slash its retail travel services, moving from brick and mortar at 27 B.C. locations to either ‘click’ or ‘call’.

The graduated closures, to be fully completed by Jan. 15, 2010, will affect 157 full-time and part-time positions, 124 in BCAA’s sales centre network and 33 at the association’s head office in Burnaby. Approximately 50% of the retail closures are in the Lower Mainland.

Continued annual declining profits combined with the trend towards more online bookings is being cited for the closures.

“Since last February, we have undergone a complete review of our travel business and explored different opportunities,” said Dale Urquhart, BCAA Travel director of travel services. “To get the profitability that we needed, the best option was to partner with another travel provider.”

Negotiations with a travel provider collapsed only days earlier leaving BCCA with no other option but to announce a termination of retail store services. “We were hopeful up until this last week,” she said, unable to name the company because of confidentiality reasons. “We were not able to close the deal.”

While retail travel is affected, BCAA locations will continue to market insurance (including travel medical insurance) and other automotive related services. Travel bookings at retail centres will end with bookings in future available only via the BCAA Internet site or through the Burnaby customer call centre.

BCAA Travel is expected to retain a skeleton staff of approximately 20 or only 10% of its staff.

Asked if her own position would be retained, Urquhart said she was unsure as not all the decisions had been made on support staff and “obviously I’m in the support area”. However, she said since the announcement BCAA staff members have been receiving job offers from other companies. “It speaks to the quality of the agency,” she said.

BCAA is providing career counselling, web seminars and also hosting career fairs so that other companies can meet prospective employees, Urquhart said.

The closures are expected to cost BCAA Travel business as other companies take on many of the travel agents and their loyal clients follow. “It is quite possible and quite likely,” Urquhart acknowledged, adding, “we don’t expect the same volumes”. The face-to-face market differs from clients who are willing to call or use the Internet, so BCAA Travel is also not expecting to see a spike in ‘click’ or ‘call’ either.

Urquhart said BCAA Travel still retains strong ties with suppliers and is hoping to partner with select suppliers and offer BCAA “preferred travel provider” status to its BCAA membership. BCAA is also interested in selling remaining travel assets to other travel providers.

The decision to significantly scale back BCAA’s travel offerings was driven by fundamental changes in the travel industry, explained president and CEO, Bill Bullis. The decline of agency commissions has made it very difficult to operate an independent travel agency model profitably, he said.

The emergence of the Internet has enabled suppliers to cut distribution costs by selling directly to customers, and increased the comfort of consumers to do their own trip-planning and booking. Whereas 15 years ago virtually all vacation and airline tickets were sold through travel agents or in person direct, today most of these transactions are completed online.

Travel industry studies in Canada and the U.S. report that online bookings (direct-to-supplier, metasearch sites and online travel agencies) account for anywhere from 64% to 84% of total bookings. Supplier direct sales today account for 45% of all travel bookings.