Tour operator failures are running at “incredibly low” levels despite the recent high profile collapse of Villa Parade parent Air Parade.
The Travel Trust Fund, which pays out in the case of an Atol holder failure, is more than £55 million in credit compared with a deficit of £20 million this time last year, according to the Civil Aviation Authority’s head of Atol Andy Cohen.
Speaking at the Aito Agents 2014 conference, Cohen said: “We only had 13 failures last year with a total cost of £4 million and we recovered £1.5 million from previous failures.
“There’s been a small decline in the number of Atol holders but overall the number of protected seats has increased significantly.
“In 2012 we had 17 million protected holidays in the UK and now it’s more than 21 million.”
He said the collapse of Air Parade was still under investigation while the earlier failure of Longwood Holidays was linked to the drop off in business to Egypt following changes in Foreign Office advice.
“Longwood had a significant amount of business to Egypt and they tried to adapt as much as possible to the changes but found it a challenge,” he added.