ABTA welcomes Chancellors announcement to support UK businesses but requests to see some more steps to be announced.
In a statement, Mark Tanzer, chief executive of the association, said: ?The announcement by the Chancellor is a positive statement of intent, we will need the government to follow-through on its commitment to ?do whatever it takes? to support struggling UK travel businesses. We also need to see some of the measures announced, such as the government-backed loan scheme, made immediately available to travel businesses and further clarity on how businesses will be able to access these loans. It is also essential the government acts immediately by making temporary changes to existing package travel regulations. The existing financial protection structures and processes designed to protect UK consumers were not designed to cope with the demands that are currently being placed on them.?
The association is calling for urgent support from the government to help businesses through the short-term. Without this support, the association believes that perfectly viable and normally successful UK travel businesses employing tens of thousands of people are at risk of going bankrupt.
Travel businesses are working around the clock to manage arrangements for customers in destination, including repatriation, and have been trying to provide alternative arrangements for those with imminent departures but this is becoming increasingly difficult as the virus spreads. Travel agents and tour operators are also facing a huge drop in bookings.
Because of the unique circumstances, ABTA is calling for temporary changes to the UK Package Travel Regulations at European and UK government level, with immediate effect. The existing financial protection structures and regulations were not designed to cope with a large-scale collapse of businesses.
The changes ABTA is asking for are:
- That tour operators should not be responsible for providing refunds if these costs are not covered by the suppliers (e.g. the hotel or airline). Where those suppliers cannot or will not refund, there needs to be an emergency government consumer hardship fund to fulfil refund payments.
- That the 14-day window in the Regulations for refund payments should be removed.
- That refund credits should be allowed as an acceptable alternative to cash refunds, with all protections carried forward as part of the refund credit.
We are also calling for:
- Urgent action to enable the provision to all sizes of business of loans that the Chancellor and Bank of England announced last week with the access mechanisms for these loans made clear.
- A suspension of Air Passenger Duty, the saving of which to be passed onto the consumer to help the sector to recover at the earliest opportunity.
- Immediate deferment of HMRC payments for a period of six months in order to support cash flow.
