Online travel fraud jolts BD’s $1b air-ticket mrkt
Staff Reporter :
A wave of online ticketing scams has rattled Bangladesh’s $1-billion air travel market, shaking confidence among passengers and travel agents and exposing glaring weaknesses in regulatory oversight.
In just two months, three online travel agencies like Flight Expert, Fly Far International, and Travel Business Portal have reportedly shut down and vanished after collecting hundreds of crores of taka in advance payments.
Many victims were small and medium-sized travel agents who bought tickets on credit or paid upfront hoping to secure discounts and cashback offers.
Individual passengers have also lost money after being lured by low-fare promotions that later proved fake.
Industry insiders say the crisis stems from lax monitoring, no clear policy governing online travel platforms, and a system that allows agents to cancel tickets without customer consent.
They also allege regulators ignored repeated warnings from the travel-agency association.
“We wrote to the ministry several times. If swift action had been taken, these frauds could have been prevented,” said Afsia Jannat Saleh, former secretary general of the Association of Travel Agents of Bangladesh (ATAB).
Following public outcry, the government has issued a draft ordinance to tighten control.
It proposes banning business-to-business (B2B) ticket sales a loophole at the centre of most scams and requiring a Tk1-crore bank guarantee for online travel agencies, and Tk10 lakh for offline ones.
Travel Business Portal alone reportedly owes about Tk28 crore to clients. Its top executives have disappeared, leaving staff fearful of angry customers. Similar stories followed the collapse of Flight Expert and Fly Far.
Bangladesh has around 5,000 licensed travel agents, but only about 1,300 are accredited by the International Air Transport Association (IATA), which requires a financial guarantee.
Of those, just 700-750 actively issue tickets, while the rest function as sub-agents – a structure that amplifies risk when a major operator defaults.
Online ticketing still represents just 10-12 percent of the market, but platforms such as ShareTrip and GoZayaan have driven rapid digital adoption.
Critics say some newcomers tried to grow too fast by offering unsustainably deep discounts and running up credit from major agents, without maintaining adequate capital or security.
Large agents have also claimed heavy losses. “We lost more than Tk30 crore to Flight Expert alone,” said Nirmal Chandra Bairagi of Hajee Air Travel, rejecting suggestions that big agencies colluded in the scheme.
Industry voices warn that the current system encourages risky credit practices, opaque accounting, and “unhealthy competition” to become top-selling agents for airlines – often rewarded with private fares, extra commissions, and overseas incentives.
Authorities have launched joint drives with consumer-rights officials, but victims say enforcement remains slow.
Experts urge travelers to pay with debit or credit cards so they can dispute charges if service fails, and advice sub-agents to rely on bank guarantees rather than unsecured credit.
Airlines and industry leaders also suggest that passenger’s book directly from carriers, or that the governments permanently ban agency-to-agency ticketing a move they say could finally close the door on large-scale fraud in Bangladesh’s aviation market.