The CAA has entered into an arrangement with the travel industry, including a large number of the retailers worst affected by the Goldtrail Holidays collapse, to ensure customers are protected – but that neither bears the full financial burden.
The agreement, which was hammered out over the last two days, will see the CAA pick up the costs, through its Air Travel Trust Fund, for the repatriation of all customers of the retailers who agree to the arrangement – specifically those who had been dealing with the Turkey specialist on an Atol-to-Atol basis.
The CAA will also cover the total costs of anyone who has bought a full Goldtrail package holiday for this summer onwards from any retailer who participates in the new arrangement.
For forward flight-only or the flight element of flight-plus sales booked through Goldtrail, the CAA has agreed to a collaboration with the Atol holder retailer to jointly bear the burden of the consumer claims for those who participate.
But the CAA’s head of Atol licensing Andy Cohen said: “Where the agents are putting together holidays which could be construed as a package, we are asking them to put them on their licence, but it’s not in this agreement.”
The CAA has identified about 20 major retailers who are “materially exposed” to the Goldtrail collapse, many of whom have already agreed to the deal.
These retailers had been put on Atol-to-Atol invoicing terms by Goldtrail and did not have formal retail agency agreements in place with the failed operator.
Many had not even noticed that their invoicing terms had changed and some of those which did were unable to have the arrangements altered by Goldtrail before its failure.
The Turkey operator went into administration on July 16 and the CAA had initially sent affected agents a letter demanding they cover the first £150 for the repatriation of each customer.
Agents refused to pay, believing they had played by the rules by getting an Atol licence and should not be penalised yet again just because they had been effectively “duped” by these invoicing terms.
Cohen said: “This is not a massive u-turn. The Atol trade are having a difficult time with various failures that they have had to bear the cost of. This is a one-off gesture given the time of the year and the difficulties of this particular case, to help those agents.”
Deputy Director of the CAA’s consumer protection group David Moesli said: “This is a very positive message for the travel industry to be giving to consumers who have been hit right at the start of the school holidays.
“The trade has agreed that they will be very proactive with looking after their customers, going out to them to sort out refunds and rebook them so that they don’t lose their summer holiday.
“This is one of the lessons that we learnt from the XL failure that refunds took too long. This means that won’t happen again and consumers will still get away on holiday this summer.”
Of those agents still to be convinced of the new CAA deal, some believe it unnecessary since they have taken out Supplier Failure Cover (“SFC”) .
But those close to the negotiations claim it would cover a substantial proportion of their losses in the event that there are any difficulties in claiming against the SFC cover.