The comments were made at the latest TTG Industry Leaders Forum last week, where Stephen D’Alfonso, Thomas Cook’s group head of public affairs, highlighted concerns about false holiday illness claims.
Cook, along with Tui, joined Abta earlier this month in delivering a letter to newly appointed justice secretary David Lidington, requesting a meeting to formally discuss potential law changes.
“Abta has launched a campaign and it was [about] putting aside commercial interests and competitiveness to work collaboratively where we can,” said D’Alfonso. “It’s shocking [this] is happening to the industry and there’s a potential [clause] that could change that.
“Potentially it would not take very long either. There were some good announcements made in the Queen’s Speech, but there are also some simple technical changes the government could make through secondary legislation that doesn’t need to be put through parliamentary vote.”
D’Alfonso added: “I feel optimistic that this will be looked at by the government in quite short order.”
Meanwhile, Andy Stark, managing director of The Global Travel Group, warned the onslaught of holiday sickness claims could ultimately put travel companies “out of business”.
“Maybe it’s just a case of dusting off what was done last time [when whiplash claims rose sharply] and making some suitable recommendations... [But] this is a massive problem and for smaller businesses… this could put you out of business.”
Panellists also agreed that the firms behind the surge in claims would likely “move on” to other sectors. Stark said: “It’ll undoubtedly close down and they’ll move on to something else, [but] we’ve got to do something about this really quickly.”
