Remembering Bruce Bishins

One of the most accomplished technical trainers in the travel industry, Bruce Bishins has been a respected and well-known consultant to travel agencies for over 30 years. He has held positions at Air Canada, Swissair, Air France, and Austrian Airlines, and was Manager-Travel Industry Training at Trans World Airlines for nearly eight years. He developed and implemented the travel agency training program for PARS. In 1978, he was appointed by a joint airline task force to the position of Manager-Procedures Training for the Air Traffic Conference (the predecessor to the ARC Area Settlement Plan in the U.S.).

In 1980, he joined the Airline Training Council as Executive Director. In 1991, while still at ATC, he was contracted by the International Air Transport Association to provide technical support and training for travel agents and air carriers participating in the IATA Billing and Settlement Plan (BSP).

During his time with the Airline Training Council, he had directly trained well over 200,000 travel agent and airline personnel.

He has been a tireless proponent for cost-reduction in travel agency distribution and is a founder of the Genesis Travel Distribution System and also held the roles as head of ARTA Canada, GATAA and ARTA USA where he was known for his unselfishness and hard work to the cause of small and medium travel agencies throughout the USA and Canada. He also served as Head of Industry relations for BAR Canada based in Toronto.

Bruce passed away in Toronto, Canada on January 16, 2013 while a patient at Coronary Intensive Care in the Toronto General Hospital. He had mainly recovered from a stroke he suffered in Dec. 2011, but continued heart ailments forced him to return to hospital in the later part of 2012, and he finally succumbed to congestive heart failure.

Bruce is survived by his brother.

-30-