Advantage Travel Centres is to leave the Triton superconsortium in four weeks and John McEwan is no longer chairman of Triton following a board meeting earlier this week.
Global chief executive Andrew Botterill has been voted in as temporary chairman of Triton and a permanent replacement is expected to be announced in the next few weeks.
This will leave Triton with around 1,200 agency members.
During the Triton conference in April, consortium members Advantage, Global Travel Group and Worldchoice announced they would no longer work as a joint buying organisation. This left some agents feeling unsure of what the consortium could offer.
The move was rumoured to be instigated by Advantage, which wanted to negotiate its own commercial deals.
There is some speculation that Triton – with Global Travel Group and Worldchoice – could consider a return to joint commercial deals.
However, Botterill and Worldchoice chairman Colin Heal said the two groups would continue to work together on supplier deals, where appropriate.
Heal said he was “sad indeed this has come to pass“.
A statement issued by Global said Advantage was given four weeks to leave the superconsortium and that McEwan had been removed from the chair as the board “feels [he] has shown a lack of commitment to Triton despite being asked formally to demonstrate his support.”
McEwan hit back and said at no time during the meeting were “we given notice” and it was mutually agreed that Advantage would leave Triton in four weeks‘ time.
He said: “Communications have implied we were asked to leave Advantage and remove me as the chair. This is not what happened.
“I was not removed from the chair, I stepped down.“