NEWS — HOT STORIES 4
Freedom Travel Group hits CAA’s extended deadline to set up financial trust account
This prompted criticism of the Civil Aviation Authority, the regulator that oversees Atol, which had agreed an interim arrangement with Freedom, but vowed to ensure a level playing field. Cookes said: “We were going through a big period of change within the business and we had to deal with some of those issues first to make sure the trust was implemented correctly. “We were always intending to hit the later deadline
Lee Hayhurst
Thomas Cook’s Freedom Travel Group has fallen into line with other Atol Accredited Bodies by starting to work under a financial trust. The consortium, which came under Cook’s
control as part of the retail joint venture with The Co-operative Travel Group in 2011, hit an extended deadline of November 1. The news was revealed by Freedom Travel Group
head Kelly Cookes at its annual conference in Disneyland Paris. An original deadline for accredited bodies to have trusts in place had been extended to May 1, but Freedom remained the only body not to have complied by that date.
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and were working on the trust prior to the extension.” The May 1 deadline coincided with industry rumours – never confirmed by Cook – that it was in advanced negotiations to sell Freedom. Andy Cohen, CAA head of Atol, said getting all eight accredited bodies to sign trust deeds with the CAA was a “significant milestone”. “Having trust accounts in place means more than 1,100 independent travel companies now have better
“We were working on the trust prior to the deadline extension”
financial protection and these arrangements will also provide increased benefits to customers.” Cookes said Freedom had surpassed targets over the past year and had lost only seven members. She promised increased support as part of phase one. ❯ CoPTA and Freedom conference report, page 16
The Sun Holidays site to ‘fill gap in market’ Lucy Huxley
The UK’s best-selling daily newspaper, The Sun, is launching a holiday deals platform in January, claiming there is “still a gap in the market”. The new site,
thesunholidays.co.uk, which will sit outside The Sun’s subscription model, will allow agents and operators to advertise holidays. It will launch on January 5 following a four-week promotional campaign in the paper starting on December 19. News UK head
of travel Victoria Sanders said: “The Sun has six million readers. They trust us and we want to repay them with good-value deals. Our new holidays site will offer travel companies phenomenal distribution to holiday-loving, bargain-hunting, deal-loving British consumers. “We did a lot of research before launching this
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travelweekly.co.uk — 4 December 2014
and discovered that Sun readers take an average of three holidays a year, two of them overseas. “We’ve been sending people away to UK holiday
parks for £9.50 for 25 years and are, in fact, the UK’s largest sellers of short breaks. But this is the first time we have done anything like this.” Sanders, former managing director of Teletext
Holidays, will work with a limited number of partners initially to key destinations such as Spain, Greece and Turkey. She also expects to sell lots of cruise. Agents and
operators can load deals that can be searched via destination or categories such as ‘beach’, ‘family’, ‘young & lively’ or ‘long-haul’. The deals will be listed with the most recently posted deal at the top. There will also be a ‘Sun Exclusives’ tab, featuring time-sensitive offers, including discounts, buy-one- get-one-free deals and added-value extras.
MORE HOT STORIES
Freedom
Cookes, head of
Kelly
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