Compiled with the help of artificial intelligence, based on Spanish-language information. Source below the article.
Canary travel agencies sound alarm over Imserso website failure
The Canary Association of Travel Agencies and Tour Operators (ACAVyT) has expressed its concern over the crash of the Turismo Social website, which went down early this Thursday, 17 September, in the middle of the booking period for the Imserso 2026-2027 campaign.
In a statement, the organisation explained that, according to numerous partner agencies across the Canary Islands, the outage prevented non-preferential users from making online bookings for several hours, “causing queues at offices, saturated phone lines and significant damage to the channel’s image in the eyes of end customers”.
Agencies left to face the fallout
ACAVyT recalled that travel agencies act as an authorised booking channel for the Turismo Social programme, with no ability to assign places or modify its conditions, which are defined unilaterally by the Imserso and managed through the contracted central booking companies. For this reason, the association considers it unfair that agencies should bear the wear and frustration of users when the failure occurs on a platform they do not control.
In the organisation’s view, situations of this kind damage perceptions of the retail channel’s professionalism, “when ultimate responsibility for the operability of the booking system lies with the administrations and the companies awarded the contract”.
Calls for a technical report and an official protocol
Against this backdrop, ACAVyT believes it is necessary for the Institute for the Elderly and Social Services (Imserso) and the central companies contracted for the Turismo Social programme to provide a technical report on the causes of the Turismo Social website crash and the corrective measures taken to prevent a repeat.
It is also demanding an official incident-response protocol, including direct communication channels with partner agencies, standardised messages for users and validated alternative procedures for when platforms fail. Likewise, it is calling for a strengthening of the technological infrastructure during periods of peak demand, especially in the first days of sales, when very intense traffic peaks are concentrated into very short windows.
Finally, it is seeking institutional recognition of the role of agencies as an essential channel of the programme, “preventing the reputational cost of failures beyond their control from being passed on to professionals”.
880,000 places and intense booking peaks
According to ACAVyT figures, the Imserso 2026-2027 campaign has opened with nearly 880,000 places available and a booking calendar staggered by region and user status (preferential/non-preferential), which concentrates very intense traffic peaks on specific days.
“In this context, any incident on the official platforms has an immediate impact on agencies, which are the first point of contact with users,” it stressed.
ACAVyT is calling for the necessary measures to be adopted so that situations harming both travel agencies and users of the programme do not happen again.
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