Over the summer months, Abta engaged with members across the country: in Belfast, Glasgow, Bristol, Birmingham, Manchester and London, and in a conference call open to all members. Well over 300 Abta members came along to hear about how changes to the PTD were likely to affect their businesses.
For most travel companies already trading as package organisers, many of the changes will be minimal. For other travel businesses, such as those organising business travel, a hard-fought lobbying effort on the ground in Brussels has ensured that business travel arrangements will be exempt from the scope of the directive entirely.
But for many travel businesses, particularly those engaged in dynamic packaging or “flight-plus” arrangements, the changes will be more extensive.
One of the key changes is that the scope of the directive will be broadened, and more arrangements will be captured as packages. In some instances, such as where a customer selects services from one shop, call centre, or website, before agreeing to pay, and pays a total price, similar to what might currently be explained as a “flight-plus”, this would become a package.
Other booking processes may not result in the creation of a package, but could still come under the directive under a new type of holiday arrangement, called a Linked Travel Arrangement (LTA).
An LTA is a booking that isn’t a package, where the customer enters into separate contracts for services, such as flight and hotel but where the trader facilitates the separate selection and separate payment of each service. Facilitators of LTAs aren’t responsible for the services, but they do have to put some financial protection in place.
This will likely bring many airline click-through sales into the scope of the directive.
These changes will mean that the UK’s Package Travel Regulations (PTRs) and Atol scheme will need to be changed to ensure that the new Directive is implemented correctly.
The UK government will have 24 months from the publication of the final directive, anticipated in November, to implement the EU’s changes in UK law. The revised laws will likely come into effect by May 2018.
While this date might seem rather far off, the changes could be far-reaching, requiring significant systems and process changes; businesses must therefore begin to think about how the new rules will impact them.
