February 11th, 2008
Do You Need an ATOL?
It’s surprising how few of our customers ask about this subject which is a very controversial topic in the UK travel industry at the moment.
We are occasionally asked about if we are members of ABTA or do we offer ATOL protection? In our case the latter is true, we either offer the Global Travel Group’s ATOL or we sell holidays on behalf of ATOL holding tour operators. We feel this is the better option as ATOL is operated by the Civil Aviation Authority - essentially the UK government - whereas ABTA is a membership scheme which protects customer’s money and holidays as part of their role in the UK travel industry.
The reason why this issue of bonding has become such an issues in travel industry is that there are radical changes ongoing as well as a long-standing court dispute as to what exactly the definition of a ‘package holiday’ really is. The major change is the introduction of a £1 per passenger levy which will be introduced from 1 April 2008 and will eliminate (to a certain extent with some exceptions) the need for travel organisers to lodge large bonds with the CAA thereby freeing up cashflow for these businesses.
For the traveller, this will be introduced without any apparent fuss or even awareness on their part, but it does it make it important to check that your holiday does have this protection as it will give protection against travel company’s insolvencies as well as giving peace of mind when you are overseas (who gets you home when a hurricane arrives when you are not protected for instance?).
As mentioned earlier, Conexo Global Travel is also a member of the Global Travel Group which is a UK consortium of independent travel agents. When we take your money it is paid into a client (rather like a solicitor’s client account) and is not available to us under any circumstances. The funds in this account are only used to pay for your holiday and together with other insurances we have in place offers additional peace of mind to you our valued customers. Add to this the ATOL protection alluded to earlier and we feel sure that you can be satisifed that your money is safe with us. But can you get the same answer when asking the question above of other UK online travel agents?