AITO director Noel Josephides has written to Sir Alan Sugar over the travel industry’s banking crisis. Below is the letter in full…
We have read in the weekend press that, as the prime minister’s newly appointed business champion, you have promised to form a specialist panel to mediate between the banks and travel companies.
The Association of Independent Tour Operators (AITO) represents more than 140 of the best specialist tour operators in the UK, carrying 1.1 million passengers per year.
The banks, through their credit card merchant acquirers, are systematically targeting small and medium-sized enterprises within our sector, and demanding heavy financial guarantees in order to allow the use of credit cards.
This policy is bringing companies to their knees. They seem to be targeting the travel industry as a whole, with no differentiation between low- and high-risk organisations within it.
AITO raised the problem on November 18 2008, at a Department for Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Fair Market Stakeholders meeting chaired by John Alty.
Alty asked for examples, and said the matter would be raised with the credit card companies at a meeting the following week by Ben Coates, director, Cross Party Interventions.
We have asked Mr Coates about the outcome of his meeting, but have not had the courtesy of an acknowledgement, let alone a reply. Further examples have been sent, but still no response.
AITO members have been asked to increase guarantees from £25,000 to £135,000, and from £45,000 to £395,000 – without any sudden increases in turnover to trigger such draconian measures.
We are asking our affected members and associates – whether tour operators or travel agents – to write to you direct. We hope that they will, this time, receive acknowledgement and the support they deserve in these difficult times.
We would, of course, be happy to meet with you and explain this complex issue in more detail.
Noel Josephides
director, AITO, Twickenham