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Oundle Travel Limited is fully bonded and licensed through ABTA. Oundle Travel Limited is also independently audited by ABTA, for your 100% financial protection and genuine peace of mind. This covers ALL bookings made with us and ALL holiday and travel payments made directly to us. Non UK clients, who book directly with us, and commercial bookings, are covered as well. This is the highest level of Consumer Financial Protection available.
This goes well beyond the legal minimum and is of course very expensive for us to provide, but we consider it money well spent and I’m sure you do too as this brings absolute financial security to you. As a bespoke travel company, we view providing complete, unequivocal and fully regulated protection of your booking, as an integral part of our delivery to you.
UNPROTECTED TRAVEL ARRANGMENTS
UK law requires financial protection for ‘package travel’. Unfortunately there are loopholes in the law regarding travel and enforcement has been lax in the past. Many small firms and other organisations of all sizes routinely flout or break the law.
There are huge advantages to the consumer in buying their holiday from a single bonded and licensed supplier in a “package”. If you buy a flight from a “No Frills airline” and a hotel room and car hire or other services on a web click through, you will be stuck with the hotel and other bills if the airline goes bust or closes the route – This is not theoretical, it has happened to a lot of people – 17 or so airlines went out of business last year alone. Those who had bought the same services from a Tour Operator got their money back or the holiday the Tour Operator had contracted to give them.
Many people are surprised to hear that any travel is un-bonded, but with the rise of “No Frills” Airlines, unprotected travel is actually increasing and you may very well have bought a holiday in the past couple of years in the mistaken belief that you were protected.
We have listed below a few examples: –
- Scheduled Air tickets bought direct from Airlines are NOT protected.
- Payments made to Hotels and other services bought on line on a “click through” from the main Airline site are NOT protected.
- Almost all direct bookings with foreign hotels, car hire companies, incoming travel agents etc are NOT protected.
- Bookings for holidays that do not include a flight made with a company that only has an ATOL are not protected.
- Most Travel bonding does NOT cover business travel and does NOT cover bookings made outside the country.
- Many small travel operators, including some that you may find advertised in National weekend newspaper supplements or other Magazines are NOT bonded. (Some offer inferior forms of payment protection, but many are trading illegally). These are very rarely bonded or protected in any way.
- Protection offered under “Trust Funds” is limited and has on occasion turned out to be non-existent. see below.
In order to get bonding, or become a member of ABTA, (or Aito or FTO) or be granted an ATOL licence, a company must be solvent and pass a number of stringent tests including liquidity and asset ratios. Many of those who offer unregulated trust accounts could not pass these tests, nor could they afford the bonding if they could. It is precisely because Travel companies hold your money before they supply the service that bonding was conceived in the first place and why it is so important.
For the moment Airlines and on-line bucket shops selling flights with a click through to other suppliers, are not required to be bonded. You should be aware that they fall outside the “package travel” laws and regulations, which is very much to your disadvantage. Furthermore, although the ‘elements’ may depend on each other absolutely, they are in fact individual contracts, not in any way related to each other, as I am sure they will tell you when one vital element fails, does not connect with another, is substandard or is withdrawn.
These organisations seem to believe, wrongly, that the laws do not apply to them or their accounts clearly show that they are not financially viable enough to be eligible for external licensing and bonding. Trust accounts held by a third party, such as an accountant, are not externally regulated and absolutely do NOT offer 100% financial protection. This is important for you to know to when you choose to book on any holiday.
You also need to ask such companies what their team size is and what back up they have for you in the event of things going wrong. (Oundle Travel had a team of 3 working in their offices throughout the whole weekend during the worst of the ‘ash cloud disaster’ earlier this year, for example, ready to talk to clients, re-assure them and re-arrange holiday plans.
TRAVEL TRUST FUNDS
An alternative to bonding to protect Client’s money is to hold this money in a separate ‘trust’ bank account until the holiday is supplied. This form of protection is only really suitable for someone offering tours as a hobby or a church, social or school group or in certain circumstances by Travel Agents for a small proportion of their business as actual operators.
Trust Funds fall into 2 camps. Those that are regulated and guaranteed by the Travel Trust Association, and those that are not.
A professional tour operator will be able to afford to get bonding and their accounts will stand scrutiny. If for some reason they choose to run a trust fund, this is legal as long as it is guaranteed by the TTA. Simply having a trustee’s name is not enough. There is no official, independent checking of unregulated Trust funds and in the event of problems such funds have often turned out to be empty. In these troubled economic times, the temptation to use the cash supposedly lodged in such a Trust fund could well prove too great.
As a consumer you should be asking serious questions of a company claiming to be a professional in travel if they have not bothered to put their accounts to the scrutiny of an exterior bonding organisation. If such a company accepts payment by credit card, this would afford you some protection.
If such a company does not accept payment by debit or credit card and appears (or claims) to be well established, it is most likely that the banks are not prepared to grant credit card terms to them and you should therefore be suspicious of such a company. However much a travel firm protests that it takes consumer protection and your peace of mind seriously, if it has a Trust Fund arrangement rather than bonding, and is NOT a member of the TTA, and does not even accept credit card payments, very serious questions should be asked.
Payment by Credit Card
Theoretically you can protect your payments by using a Credit Card and clients often ask us if payment by Credit Card will give them additional protection. The answer in Oundle Travel’s case, and indeed all our ABTA colleagues’ cases is NO. We have already put all the necessary protection in place for your funds.
However, some credit cards do offer the customer complimentary travel insurance and as long as you are satisfied that the level of insurance offered by your card provider gives you the protection that you might need both in the case of cancellation and emergency assistance on tour, then, by all means do pay us by Credit or Debit Card if you prefer.
We take Access, Visa, Mastercard and American Express. There is a small charge for Credit Cards, but none for Debit Cards.
Generally, it is worth paying for scheduled airline tickets by Credit Card. As to whether you can gain extra protection in any booking with a UK Tour Operator by using a Credit card, that is a moot point! If they are financially sound they will probably have bonding in place (but do check) if they are not, and are unbonded THEY ARE UNLIKELY TO BE ABLE TO TAKE CREDIT CARDS ANYWAY, as the Credit Card companies are unlikely to want to expose themselves to the risk of bad debt.
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