That was the warning from the boss of The Travel Network Group, as he called on Abta to more to tackle the new legislation.

Speaking to TTG at the Abta Travel Convention in the Azores, Gary Lewis said the industry had “dropped the ball” on Payment Services Directive 2 - the new regulations which come into force in January and will mean that agents are no longer able to charge clients to cover the costs of the banks’ credit card fees through surcharges..

“The industry has missed the boat on this,” he said. “We haven’t lobbied government about this.

No-one has spoken to the government like we did with PTD, and we should reflect on that.”

Lewis admitted that the industry as a whole was culpable, but said it now needed to “gather pace” in petitioning government to “change or alter the new regulations”.

“Our industry is unique – it’s high value with low margins. We should be raising awareness on this. [The directive] is inherently unfair. We have only been talking about this issue this year - we are all culpable.

“We should be seeing Abta having conversations with the government to get these regulations altered and changed. We are coming out of the EU – we should be having conversations to remove this directive.

“We [TTNG] will be having a conversation with Abta to start engaging with politicians on this issue,” he added.

Lewis added that the new directive would ultimately end up penalising consumers. “It’s discrimination against consumer choice because ultimately they will be discriminated against because they will be charged a booking fee”.

And he said the lack of lobbying on the directive “reinforced the message that we are not good as an industry at lobbying”.

“We are not coming together on things that we should be,” he said.