Your thoughts on the £1 levy
May 3, 2007
The Civil Aviation Authority is asking for the trade's input on reform of ATOL bonding, which it proposes replacing with a £1-per-passenger levy.
We want to use this post as a forum for your comments.
Take a look at Ian Taylor's backgrounder in this week's Travel Weekly and the CAA's consultation document, then use the comments form to leave your feedback. For example:
- Do we need another consultation?
- Do the CAA's numbers add up?
- Would ATOL holders pass the cost on to the consumer? Who should pay?
Alternatively, email your ideas to travel.weekly@rbi.co.uk.
Nathan Midgley
Martin Couzins
Comments (2)
The key issue for the CAA is to stop making ATOL bonding an unattractive options for the new age of Dynamic packaging retailers.
Previously the CAA has demanded that ATOL holders have 5% of their turnover in net free asset equivalents e.g. Cash. Given that most travel businesses do not make a profit of 5%, this in essence punished fast growing, high volume, low margin operations.
A simple levee would appear to remove this problem making it a straight forward commercial descision as to whether customers will pay £1.00 per passenger for financial protection. My hope is YES...and that as an industry we will get over the issue of it not being "fair" that Low cost carriers do not have to pay.
However if the CAA make it to complicated or hard to join the scheme they are likley to recieve the preverbial two fingers from the trade
Posted by Steve Endacott | May 6, 2007 11:22 PM
Posted on May 6, 2007 23:22
As a consumer, I wouldn't mind paying the £1 if it meant that I was protected, when booking dynamic, package or DIY.
Would consumers stop taking out travel insurance, if they felt that the £1 levy would protect them abroad?
I think it is important that consumers are clearly [no jargon please!] informed what protection this covers.
Posted by Darren Cronian | May 20, 2007 2:29 PM
Posted on May 20, 2007 14:29