MSE News: Enhanced Atol travel protection proposed 3 February 2011 at 12:39PM in Overseas holidays & travel planning 4 replies 1.5K views

Former_MSE_Helen

This is the discussion thread for the following MSE News Story:

"Enhanced Atol travel protection proposed ..."

Read the full story:
Enhanced Atol travel protection proposed

HXDave

Holidaymakers will be given more protection if their tour operator collapses under Government plans launched today.

Great news to hear, and we all look forward to what the final proposals bring. however at the end of the day, a lot of people book on price and price alone. Under these forums you see pages & pages of people complaining that they are still waiting for monies back from the collapse of Goldtrail & Kiss Flights. The trouble with this is that in these cases for a lot of people it wasn't their tour operator that went bust, it was just a supplier to the tour operator that went bust, and was therefore not covered under ATOL.

Lets hope that once the final version comes out, it offers a lot more protection from these agents (who also act as operators), and gives greater powers to the bodies that oversee these.

HXDave

bagand96

Good to see better protection, I wonder what the cost of the ATOL bond will be though after the reforms. Can bet your bottom dollar that the price of the ATOL bond will increase. Not too long ago it was £1 per passenger, now it is £2.50 to help claw back the losses from XL/Goldtrail/Kiss. To offer more protection I can only see it increasing.

Alan_Bowen

The CAA have made it clear that the £2.50 will not increase. With possibly another 5 or 6 million people a year being covered, the income of the Air Travel Trust that pays out when an ATOL holder fails should increase by around £12M so there should be no reason for an increase. The problem will be with all the on line agents, so loved on this forum, who have been selling parts of holidays without making it clear what the customer is buying. Currently they offer no ATOL protection and the CAA have financial criteria that some of them may not match. Watch for those who shout loudest, they may have the most to lose.

Moonchild

From what i've read (and to be clarified) it misses out on important confusing part - click-throughs.

i.e. You book a Ryanair flight, and want to add a hotel so you click on Ryanair hotels, and book a hotel.

Are you covered under old regulations? No. Are you covered under new regulations? No (because unbeknown to you, you are actually being linked through to a completely different company with 'no' links).

Closing loopholes like this is the only way forward to help end this confusion.