Curious little tale kicking about for almost a week, after a UK-based travel agency boss created a Facebook group to start a campaign against cruise operators.
Paul Smith, boss of Quartz Travel in York, launched the Facebook group last week with the explosive title: "STOP CRUISE LINES FROM STEALING AGENTS DATABASES" [sic].
The group was open for anyone to join and appears to have attracted close to 200 members, many of which are fellow UK travel agents.
Theft is quite an accusation, especially in a public forum, often implying criminal behaviour.
The reality is quite different. Smith claims cruise lines are demanding "excess" information from passengers and then using the data to market to them directly.
Agents are worried that operators are using the information in a bid to lower costs and reach consumers by bypassing agents (and the commissions) when looking for repeat bookings.
Smith claims he will take legal action against cruise lines. He told UK trade newspaper TTG:
"If I don’t have a cruise line coming forward to say that they will stop taking the addresses and telephone numbers of our new clients when we book them on a cruise, then we will have no choice but to go to the highest authority and find out what they have done with our database, as they should not be using that information without ours or the customers’ permission."
It's a classic agent-operator problem, but one Smith wants to gain momentum through the creation of the Facebook group. He's doing a good job so far, engaging with other members to discuss the issues.
When Giles Hawke from Complete Cruise Solution, a trade sales house, requested to join the group, Smith asked members whether he should be allowed. At least one said: "No".
Smith wrote on the page:
"He's only the sales director for Carnival and he wanted to join our group I sent a poll out to see how many people wanted him to join of all the people said tell him to piss off.. See how feels when us the travel agents are now BACK in control."
But while members do not appear to be particularly eager to have officials from cruise operators join the group, others in the industry have become a little concerned about curious methods being used to attract new members.
It turns out that at least one senior figure in the industry was secretly made a member of the group, meaning administrators of the campaign are actively adding people without their permission.
Chris Brown, managing director of Sunshine.co.uk and the recently launched BonVoyage online cruise agency, only discovered he had become a member when a colleague saw information from the group appearing in Brown's timeline.
He has since removed himself from the group.
While this illustrates a quirk of the Facebook membership system, some might also note the irony of a group campaigning against "stealing" customer data but happily and stealthily recruiting members to a Facebook group.
So, what does Smith say about this?
Tnooz attempted to engage with him on the Facebook group last week, asking questions about the campaign and attempting to clarify the nature of the accusation.
Smith refused to disclose any details about the campaign, outlining how he had a agreement with TTG to have first take on the story.
Fair enough - it's an interesting intermediary-operator story and would reach a decent number of UK agents.
Unfortunately, since then, Tnooz has not been able to ask about the stealthy addition of members to the group because, well, curiously Smith has blocked the author from viewing the group.