Disney cut ties with Smart Moms Travel. Here is what the owner says happened and what it means for anyone who books through a travel agency.
Why A Disney Travel Agency Is In The Headlines
Disney fans are used to news about new rides, ticket deals, or fireworks shows. This story is different. It is about the business that sits behind your vacation, the travel agency that handles the reservation you never have to think about.
Earlier this month, Disney ended its relationship with Smart Moms Travel, a nationwide agency that focuses on Disney, Universal, and cruise vacations. The company lost its Authorized Disney Vacation Planner designation after Disney raised concerns about changes in the agency’s business practices.
At roughly the same time, former and current Smart Moms Travel agents spoke to local media and on social channels about alleged wrongful terminations and withheld commissions. Disney’s move to cut ties came after that reporting, although the company did not publicly link its decision to specific allegations.
Now the agency’s owner has gone on camera to give her side of the story, and the result is a messy, uncomfortable look at what happens when the business relationship between a host agency and its independent contractors breaks down.
If you want the full background, Mickey Visit has good summaries of both Disney’s termination and the latest response from the agency’s owner at Mickey Visit and this follow up article.
What The Smart Moms Travel CEO Told NBC Connecticut
A local station, NBC Connecticut, interviewed Smart Moms Travel CEO Lauralyn “LJ” Johnson in a recorded Zoom interview after former and current agents accused the company of terminating them and withholding commission payments they say they earned.
In the interview, Johnson says she believes some agents breached their contracts and effectively stole from the agency by arranging vacations directly with Disney and cutting Smart Moms Travel out of the commission. She also accuses top-level managers of working with payroll to pay out more commission than agents were owed, which, in her telling, left the numbers “not matching” on the books. She offered no evidence other than a response only slightly more polished than “the maths weren’t mathing.”
Pressed on proof, Johnson acknowledges that she does not have documentation to support those claims yet. She said she needs to hire someone to examine the books and that members of her reporting staff “fled the scene” and resigned. This is a claim that many of the 70-75 terminated Independent Contractors (ICs) some of whom held additional support positions, have claimed online.
Johnson also says that she plans to withhold upcoming commission payments because she believes agents violated non-compete clauses. She clarified that she has not yet missed a payroll (because it’s not yet due), but does not intend to run the next one as planned due to “legal situations” that are still playing out. When reporters continued to press on why she would hold back pay, the interview ended abruptly. These matters obviously would not be resolved by the end of the month when payments are due.
Disney has denied Johnson’s allegation that agents were colluding with the company behind her back, and also confirmed that it terminated Smart Moms Travel’s status as an authorized Disney planner based on concerns about changes to the agency’s business practices.
You can watch the full NBC Connecticut segment here:
What Agents Say Happened Instead
The agents who have spoken out describe a very different story. They say they did not steal from the company and that they did not resign in bulk. Instead, they report that they were sent termination letters and then told that commissions they believed they had already earned would not be paid.
Agents also push back on the suggestion that they could quietly cut the agency out of the picture. In their view, clients pay the supplier directly, whether that is Disney, a cruise line, or another partner, and the supplier then pays the agency a commission. The agency is the one that distributes that commission to individual advisers according to its own internal rules.
From the outside, travelers do not see any of this. To the guest, the trip simply looks “booked.” Behind the scenes, a lot of trust is required. Contractors trust the host agency to track bookings correctly and pass on commissions. The host trusts contractors to follow company policies and contractual terms.
In a case of collusion, the agent would circumvent the agency and book direct under another agency or establish their own. Either would be a violation of the contract as this proprietor has disclosed. The agents deny this took place. Generally speaking, this would take an extreme amount of effort and coordination if 70-75 agents took part in such an action, an almost impossible achievement.
Where The Story Stands Now
At this point, the facts that everyone agrees on are fairly narrow. Disney has terminated its authorized planner relationship with Smart Moms Travel. Former and current agents say they have been terminated and are owed money. The CEO denies wrongdoing, accuses some agents of theft and contract breaches, admits she currently has no proof that would stand up on paper, and plans to keep withholding commissions while legal issues are sorted out.
What we do not have yet are court rulings, regulatory findings, or a detailed public accounting that would settle the dispute. For now, the story is living in the space between media investigations, company statements, and social media posts.
What remains the most logical to me, is that the agency owner felt the commissions and earnings didn’t match expectations. She has stated she didn’t have evidence or the right staff to determine if her suspicions were founded. It seems increasingly likely that the owner has experienced some sort of a breakdown, suspected everyone of being against her, and then terminated a bunch of agents, withheld commissions and absconded to a cliffside resort in Europe.
Closing Thoughts
Disney’s decision to cut ties with a large agency over business practice concerns shows how important trust is in the travel ecosystem, not just between guests and the brand, but between suppliers, host agencies, and its contractors. The conflicting accounts from Smart Moms Travel leadership and former agents underline how fragile that trust can be when money, contracts, and non-compete clauses collide. This is a messy situation but if the 70+ agents are, in fact, innocent, or equally the agency owner can’t support her claim with proof, they should be made whole. Unfortunately, that may not happen. Likewise, if there is proof of widespread collusion, the agency owner should be similarly vindicated.
What do you think?
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