ATOL consumer protection update

The loop hole that allowed unscrupulous agents to book a flight for you and then add the accomodation a few days later, (thus breaking the atol regulations, ) which then ends up losing you the consumer protection that atol brings, look set to be tightened up and closed.

Click-through sales from the same website made months apart, could now also be brought under the Atol regulations.

Susan Deer, Monarch Group’s in-house solicitor, said the government was keen to close a potential loophole on “flight plus” sales where agents booked accommodation two days after a flight.

Abta and technical experts this week held talks at the Department for Transport as part of consultations over reform to the Atol system.

Under consideration is the maximum length of time in which click-through sales of, for example, a flight followed by a separate accommodation purchase, would be designated as a package and fall under the Atol system.

Abta’s head of legal services Simon Bunce said initial thoughts had been that separate transactions made on the same website two to eight days apart should be covered, bringing purchases made over two weekends under the consumer protection system.

Bunce said it had emerged during the DfT meeting that it was possible to track purchases on longer periods.