ARTAC Worldchoice’s decision to launch its own bonding scheme with significant savings against the Travel Agents Bond Replacement Scheme seems to have taken ABTA by surprise.
But at our conference in Jersey this April, I gave a clear warning that my members had become frustrated at the lack of progress with ABTA to improve upon the 50% reduction in Applicable Risk Turnover they receive on TABRS in respect of transactions through our central accounting system.
There is no justification for ABTA’s refusal to improve significantly on this figure since we cover transactions through our central accounting system with a separate bond. The Worldchoice bonding scheme will save our members up to 25% of the cost of bonding through TABRS.
Thus, if a member currently pays £2,000 in respect of Part 2 TABRS bonding they will save about £500 per year. Unlike ABTA, ARTACwill receive no commission on these payments so the full benefit will be passed on to our members.
No organisation could have been more supportive of ABTA than ARTAC but my members believe the support is mainly one way. Apart from the lack of progress on bonding, members are unhappy about ABTA’s increasing involvement in commercial initiatives, an area best left to the consortia. They also dislike the automatic fines for quite trivial errors and are concerned that major national consortia such as ourselves and Advantage Travel Centres are being treated with contempt in the proposed restructuring of ABTA.
On this latter point it is relevant that in terms of head offices we comprise about 25% of ABTA agency membership and Advantage about 23%.
Our members pay well in excess of £300,000 per year in subscriptions – about three times that of Lunn Poly, similarly with Advantage.
Despite this, ABTA says there is no case for board membership for either organisation.
In April ARTAC Worldchoice members voted to allow the possibility of being an ARTAC member without being in ABTA. In the short term this is unlikely to bring about any dramatic change.
Indeed, I have always said that if ABTA did not exist we would have to invent it as an umbrella organisation for the travel industry and as a regulatory body.
That does not mean it can take our support for granted. The industry is changing fast and ABTA has to change with it. New relationships with independent consortia must be an essential part of that change.