Abta members ‘trying to get to grips’ with new CMA pricing

Abta reports members “are trying to get to grips” with new Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) guidance on pricing despite being required to do so during the peak booking period.

Time is running short as the CMA gave notice it would allow travel sellers just three months to comply when it issued guidance on November 18 that all mandatory fees and taxes paid by customers in destination must be included in total prices.

Paula Macfarlane, Abta senior solicitor, acknowledged: “The timing, making system changes in peak booking season, is difficult, but people have to get on with it without delay.” She warned: “The CMA can enforce this.”

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Some agents have suggested the guidance applies principally to operators. But Macfarlane noted: “It can apply to agents and to anyone making a price indication to a customer.”

She said: “Members are trying to get to grips with it. Everyone is working on it [compliance], but I’m not sure anyone has got there yet.”

Businesses are advised to show a ‘total price’, with the amount to ‘pay now’ and amount to ‘pay at the property’, plus an explanatory note that the total price “includes approx. £xx (€xx) tax to be paid at the property based on an exchange rate of €1 = £x, and exchange rate and local taxes may change before you pay”.

However, members continue to ask whether charges in destination need to be included in the total price, said Macfarlane, stressing that sellers “can’t anymore” just set out the tax next to the price.

Members are also asking what to do if they can’t obtain a resort fee from a supplier, or if pricing a holiday when they don’t know which hotel will be booked.

Macfarlane said: “Suppliers are going to have to give resort fees. The CMA has acknowledged it would take account of that if it’s a problem.

“If you really don’t know the hotel, you can’t put it in the price. The one carve-out in the legislation is if a total price is impossible to calculate. But that is untested [in practice].”

She urged members to use the CMA guidance and to contact Abta’s member support team with any questions, saying: “We’re gathering queries to see where there are gaps and problems.”