A Department for Business (BEIS) review of the Package Travel Regulations (PTRs) could bring clarity on the impact of Foreign Office advice and some “fairly straightforward simplifications”.
David Marshall of the BEIS Consumer and Competition team told the Abta Travel Regulations Conference that the department has held a series of workshops with “about 100” industry and consumer stakeholders through the summer to review the PTRs.
He said: “The review was important given Covid-19 has been an enormous stress test for the regulations. We’ve seen an extraordinary effort by the sector to handle refunds. The difficulties of that were obvious.”
Marshall described Refund Credit Notes [RCNs] as “a crucial tool” and “a game changer to help businesses manage cash flow”.
Asked whether RCNs could be included in the revised regulations, he acknowledged they had not been so far but said: “We could think about including RCNs.”
Marshall said the review would “align with other work going on across government”, including a wider BEIS review of consumer law, CAA Atol reform and a Department for Transport follow-up to the 2019 Airline Insolvency Review.
He noted: “Generally, what we heard from businesses was that the PTRs gave clarity, but there were some unique aspects to Covid, in particular, around Foreign Office advice. We heard a lot about supply chain delays [on refunds] and the difficulties firms had in extracting money from suppliers.
“Second, there are a lot of different bits of financial protection which obscures things for consumers. Third, [the PTRs] can be hard to understand.
“Hopefully there will be some fairly straightforward simplifications [we can make].”
He highlighted four possible areas for reform – a simplification around Linked Travel Arrangements “which are difficult to understand”, a simpler definition of “what is and is not a package”, more flexibility “around the way in which organisers can comply” and simplified information requirements for businesses.
However, Marshall said: “Ministers are clear they are not prepared to relax the 14-day refund rule.”
He said: “The next step will be to turn the review into firm proposals and indicate the next steps.” Marshall conceded BEIS would also follow closely any changes in EU regulations, saying: “We work quite closely with the EU.”