Travel Trust Association

jestaminnit

I have been looking at holidays for this year, and I've noticed a new protection scheme with some travel companies I know about ATOL and ABTA but recently I have seen TTA (Travel Trust Association) is it safe to book with these companies?

HXDave

Hi,

The TTA work very similar to how we work and, in all honest, can be a lot safer to book with than ABTA members. As far as ATOL goes, any holiday, whether booked through an ABTA / TTA / OTHER travel agent should always be ATOL bonded, and this is totally different from the ABTA / TTA bond.

The ABTA bond (or TTA or the one like ours) protects against financial loss if the travel agent goes bust, not the tour operator (that is where the ATOL comes in - provided it is a holiday with a flight element). What happens with the TTA agents (and mine, for that matter) is that any monies paid by clients goes into a seperate, bonded account that is managed centrally by trustees & bankers (ok, maybe not the most trusted of people at the moment, however slightly different here). The travel agent effectivly does not 'touch', or have access to your money at any time. now i'm not 100% sure what happens with the TTA, but with us, when the tour operator wants their money for the holiday, they will apply to the managers of the trust fund, and the money is paid out. Only then, once full payment is made to the tour operator, does the travel agent then get their payment for the holiday (ie - commission). Therefore, any money from your holiday that goes into the agents bank account is the agents money.

Now if you book with an ABTA agent, they generally work different. However i would like to point out here and now that probably 99.99% of ABTA travel agents are 100% above board, and there is absolutely no problem booking through them, however as in any case, you can always get a bad apple here & there. When you pay your holiday balance with an ABTA agent, the money generally goes into the agents won bank account - the same bank account that is used to pay wages, heating, lighting, rents, rates etc etc etc. Therefore, the money you paid for your holiday could eventually be used to pay the wage bill at the end of the week / month, and then when tour operator X comes requesting the payment for your holiday, it's not there. Now dont let this alarm you, as ABTA has codes of conducts & procedures, and even if the agent did this and then went bust, providing you have your official reciepts then your money & holiday are safe (as this is what ABTA provides for), however there may be additional hassle with paperwork, and you holiday may then be handled by an agent at the other end of the country, or maybe by the tour operator direct.

However rest assured, all these schemes are designed to look after you and your holiday.

Hope this clears things up a little.

HXDave

Engadine

The TTA is not a new protection scheme, the Travel Trust Association has been around for a number of years. They have a few hundred agents as members. HX Dave has given a very thorough description of how it works. As he said clients money is paid into a trust fund that the agent cannot access. Your money is safe and your holiday is protected.