The credit and debit card charge-back scheme provides customers with adequate financial protection, new Abta board member Kane Pirie told The Travel Convention.
The Travel Republic managing director claimed that 95% of his customers’ payments were fully protected through the charge-back scheme, a figure that he said would increase to almost 100% by the end of the year as more card providers adopted it.
Pirie, who was found not guilty of breaching Atol regulations earlier this year and whose company was also exonerated, said the best advice to any holidaymaker was to buy on their credit card.
“That’s more reliable than the Atol scheme. As we have seen around many failures, there are all sorts of complications, delays and uncertainties [with the Atol scheme],” he said.
“The vast majority of debit cards are now covered as well. There has been huge change in this area in the last 12 months.
“The ignorance of the charge-back scheme is one of the biggest jokes in the whole consumer protection debate.
“There is this endless debate; meanwhile, another industry has put in place a system that I think is good and robust.”
Asked about forthcoming changes to Atol and the likely introduction of a ‘flight-plus’ – a scheme that would cover the purchase of a flight plus another holiday element – Pirie said: “We have always operated within the law and that’s been borne out in the courts.
“If the law changes and that means we have got to change then we will be first in line to do it.”
Pirie said any attempt at Atol reform was likely to fail because it would not encompass airlines. And he would not expect any airline to offer protection for its flight sales because they would not have to by law.
Despite the recent contraction in supply of air seats with the failures of Goldtrail and Kiss Flights, Pirie insisted there would be enough capacity next year.
- More from the Travel Convention at travelweekly.co.uk/tc2010