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The Air Travel Organisers Licensing Scheme Explained
In the current economic climate, it has become increasingly important to make sure that, if your travel provider goes bankrupt before or during your holiday, you have some degree of protection against your holiday falling through without a refund, or worse, being stranded abroad with no affordable route home.
You may be pleased to learn, then, that there are quite a few things that can be done to prevent your dream holiday plans from going belly up, even if your travel company does.
It may sound obvious, but the best way to protect yourself against being stranded abroad or having your holiday cancelled altogether is to book through a well-known, licensed tour operator. These are usually affiliated with some kind of consumer protection scheme, depending on the country in which they are based.
In the UK travel industry, the Air Travel Organisers Licensing scheme(ATOL), organised by the Civil Aviation Authority(CAA), is the main consumer protection scheme in operation.
Membership of this scheme protects the customers of a tour operator from being stranded or losing out on money if the operator goes under. In order to claim membership of the scheme, operators have to lodge a certain amount of money in the form of bonds with the CAA in order to cover the costs of refunding their outstanding flights in the event of a bankruptcy.
Licensed tour operators in the UK are obliged by law to be members of the ATOL scheme, and the insurance offered by the scheme to customers is included as standard in every payment made to a licensed travel company.
Whenever you hand over any money to a tour operator, even in the form of a refundable deposit, they are obliged to give you an ATOL receipt. This receipt should include the name of the firm that you have booked with and their ATOL number.
If you booked through an agency, using a third party tour operator registered with ATOL, and that agency goes out of business, then the third party is obliged by law to pay for the flights themselves. It will be this company that is mentioned on the ATOL receipt.
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