Fair promotion for ABTA

The Office of Fair Trading has agreed to fund a national advertising campaign promoting ABTA agents to consumers.

Its campaign, to be launched in January, will focus on the ABTA code of conduct which guarantees higher standards of service than required by law.

The move follows pressure from ABTA after the OFT snubbed the association and the national associations of four other industries in a £1.2 million campaign to launch the logo of its Consumer Codes Approval Scheme.

The OFT has promised to spend a six-figure sum on a print, radio and outdoor campaign featuring ABTA. A spokeswoman for ABTA said: “We’d hoped the ABTA logo would appear on the earlier advertising, but due to the timing of the campaign, the OFT was unable to feature it. We were not too impressed.”