IT HAS always been a favourite ploy of my partner, John der Parthog, to take one of our brochures to a dentist’s/doctor’s waiting room whenever he had an appointment and quietly leave it amongst the magazines there.
Well, other people have also had the same idea because, at the dentist’s last week, I thumbed through the brochure of a small company of which I’d never heard but which was obviously very much in competition with us on a particular destination.
It was a cheaply produced brochure with high environmental content and, as ever with such companies, no bond.
I looked through to see if there was mention of a trust account and there was the usual big song and dance made about the fact that all client monies go into this account and are only taken out once the holiday is completed. But there was, as usual, no mention of making the cheques out to the trust account and not direct to the company.
I only trust trust accounts if they are underwritten by the Travel Trust Association. But it was interesting that, although the packages did not include flights, the price of the flights were quoted as a separate item and the name of the company providing these was mentioned. How close can you get to saying you feature holidays including flights but that you really don’t! It’s a bit of a joke.
I know there are hundreds of such companies smugly sidestepping the regulations. This particular case, featuring environmental do-gooders, was so blatant you wonder where the regulators are.
To my consternation I read about this company about a week later in a quality national broadsheet. They had actually sent a journalist out and the newspaper had not bothered to check the company’s credentials. Shame on them. I can think of several other equally small, fully bonded Association of Independent Tour Operators companies who would have loved to organise the trip.
I’m sure all of us would prefer to run our companies in the most tax-efficient way and never show a profit. Unfortunately, the Civil Aviation Authority would never let us do it. The policing of the unlicensed sector of our industry is virtually non-existent. Trading standards officers cannot cope with the task and the CAA’s under-resourced.
But, cross your heart and swear to God that you have never sidestepped regulations or understated your carryings or didn’t behave in the same way as the company I have described until your business had begun to take off.
And anyway, does the Government really want to tighten up on the monitoring? The fact it allows the use of unregulated trust funds to protect client monies and has no licensing requirements for the tens of thousands of companies and individuals who act as tour operators and sidestep the regulations means they have no will to change anything.
So we are stuck between the Titans at the top and the unregulated at the bottom and the Government chooses to do nothing. I hate to think what the sheer bureaucracy involved in our job costs us. But judging by the absolute confidence of this brochure, it saves you time and money if you ignore the law of the land – and you don’t get caught either!
It’s time the Government put a stop to the actions of the unlicenced sector of our industry because their behaviour gives the rest of us a very bad name