In the current economic climate, it has become increasingly important to make sure that, if your travel provider goes bankrupt before or during your holiday, you have some degree of protection against your holiday falling through without a refund, or worse, being stranded abroad with no affordable route home.
Thankfully, there are a number of things that you can do to ensure that your holiday will go to plan, regardless of the current or future financial status of your travel provider.
The simplest and best way to make sure that you have some protection against bankruptcy is by booking your holiday through a reputable, licensed travel operator. There are a number of schemes in operation worldwide that provide customers with some fallback if their tour operator goes under.
The most common scheme used by travel companies in the UK is called ATOL, which stands for Air Travel Organisers Licensing, and is operated by the Civil Aviation Authority(CAA).
In order for a tour operator to claim membership of ATOL, they have to have lodged a certain amount of money in the form of bonds with the CAA, which will be used to refund the customers of that operator if they go belly up.
It then falls to the Civil Aviation Authority to sort out replacement flights for customers that have been left in the lurch by the bankruptcy. If the amount of money that the operator has left with the CAA is insufficient, then it falls to another government organisation, the Air Travel Trust, to pay the rest.
Whenever you hand over any money to a tour operator, even in the form of a refundable deposit, they are obliged to give you an ATOL receipt. This receipt should include the name of the firm that you have booked with and their ATOL number.
If you booked through an agent, and they go out of business, then the ATOL-registered tour operator that your flights were booked through will be obliged to honour the booking. ... Read More... |
