by Mia Taylor
Last updated: 5:25 PM ET, Tue September 9, 2025
The American Society of Travel Advisors (ASTA) is taking a stand against hotels that are notoriously slow to pay travel advisors the commissions they are owed.
ASTA CEO Zane Kerby announced Monday during the CoNexion 2025 conference that his organization has long been aware of the problem and intends to start doing something about it.
"We've been walking by a problem here in our industry for a really long time, and honestly, I'm getting tired of it,¡± Kerby told conference attendees.
The specific problem Kerby was referencing is slow- or no-pay suppliers. In a poll conducted several months ago, ASTA asked its members about the issue, and they reported a clear offender: Onyx CenterSource, which acts as a conduit, chasing and paying advisor commissions from hotels.
When ASTA asked Onyx about the lack of timely commission payments, company representatives told Kerby they only hold the payments in question for a few hours. Onyx placed the blame for slow- and no-commission payments on hoteliers themselves.
Kerby then asked for a list of the hotels known to be slow in paying commissions and says he was laughed off by Onyx. Because Onyx is not willing to provide the hotel names, Kerby said ASTA will begin building its own such list of offenders.
ASTA is aiming to provide its members with the ability to report slow- or no-pay hoteliers by the end of this month. In addition, members will have the ability to search for hotels on the so-called ¡®black list¡¯ that ASTA is creating.
Michael Schottey, ASTA¡¯s vice president of membership, marketing and communications told TravelPulse that ¡°the reporting process already exists.¡±
Traveler advisors, Schottey explained, currently have the ability to send an ¡°email to ASTA¡¯s industry affairs team¡± to report hotels for slow- or non-payment. However, Schottey added that ASTA is now ¡°streamlining¡± the reporting process ¡°and making it more visible for our members.¡±
He also expressed a positive outlook when asked whether the black list is likely to have the desired impact on the offending hotels.
¡°I¡¯m very optimistic that suppliers who cherish the most important piece of their sales channels also want to pay those commissions in a timely manner,¡± he said. ¡°I look forward to their continued partnership as we work to remediate these issues between the two parties.¡±
¡°It is not some radical notion that our members be paid fairly and on time for the work that they do,¡± Schottey added. ¡°Advisors work hard both at the time of booking and throughout their client¡¯s travel, amplifying revenue for suppliers and providing a high level of customer service for these shared consumers. They deserve to be paid for those efforts, and waiting month after month for those commissions is a practice that should be immediately rectified across the industry.¡±
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