The airline union in Venezuela urged to denounce sellers who apply “modalities that distort tourist activity”, and that carry the risk that buyers cannot travel or are scammed by illegal ticket sales.
More than 20 supposed travel agencies, which operate through social networks, They sell illegal or false plane tickets, “one way” or “cancellable”, to Venezuelans who intend to emigrate, a crime on the rise that authorized companies that “insure” put the safety and money of travelers at risk.
The Venezuelan Association of Travel and Tourism Agencies (Avavit) expressed concern about the promotion of tickets on digital platforms “without due compliance with the regulations stipulated for the international transit of people by air,” the agency reported. Eph.
The union called for denouncing sellers who apply “modalities that distort tourist activity”, and that carry the risk that buyers cannot travel or are scammed.
the president of AvavitNicola Furnari, said to Eph that at least 20 alleged agencies that sell these tickets were detected, and that they were reported by users and companies to the association, which urges the victims to formalize their complaints before the Prosecutor’s Office.
The association recently received a complaint from a man who had paid for his ticket, that of his wife and two children to Spain, but on the day of the flight, when the family arrived at the airport in Caracas, the airline prevented them from board because their tickets did not appear booked or paid for.
misleading offer
With a message that begins with the question “do you need a return to present at the airport?”, an Instagram account, also reported to Avavit, offers “tickets for rent for 24 or 48 hours exclusively for boarding and 100% verifiable ».
In order to travel to another country, there must be a return ticket within the period that the destination nation allows foreigners to stay there without a visa or residence, reason why this “rental” of a false passage is proposed to present before the immigration authorities, who have the power to deny boarding if there is no return ticket.
Furnari assured that these tickets “are a “trap” with which the passenger “violates the immigration law of the destination country”, where he will have an irregular status once the period allowed for his stay ends.
He warned that traveling under this modality has its risks, among them, he pointed out being deported “on the first plane that leaves for Venezuela” if he is discovered.
“As this has been increasing (…) the authorities are putting it under the magnifying glass because they can verify that the ticket you have to return was issued on the same day. So they detect that and they take you to another level and you can result in deportation” or detention while they investigate, he said.
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take advantage of the need
The president of Avavit pointed out that these vendors found, in the midst of the crisis, “a fertile niche” to make these offers that attract, mainly, the most desperate Venezuelans to emigrate and with the need to do so “at the lowest possible cost.”
Venezuela is experiencing a migration crisis that the global humanitarian director of the Plan International organization, Unni Krishnan, assures will worsen in the coming months and years.
More than 6.8 million Venezuelans left the country in recent years, according to the latest update of the Interagency Coordination Platform for Refugees and Migrants from Venezuela (R4V), released at the end of August, which represented an increase of 9.7 % compared to July, figures that the Government denies.
Given the “boom” of these promotions, Avavit enabled an email to collect data from these vendors. The complaints are consigned to the Ministry of Tourism for the “application of the pertinent sanctions”.
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