BUSINESS NEWS
Quarantine lifting is ‘too late’ for inbound sector
The removal of quarantine “is not a panacea” for the industry, the head of the UKinbound association, Joss Croft, has warned. “The removal of restrictions is
too little too late,” Croft said. “People plan their holidays well
in advance. Only 24% of visitors [to the UK] come in October to December, so there is only about 24% of business people can get before the end of the year. “The US drives about 16% of all
inbound spending. How much of that are we going to see when the US is not on the [Covid travel] list? Croft told an Elman Wall
Covid-19 webinar: “The market is getting smaller and the timeframe is getting shorter. We’re in for some real challenges. We did a survey of our members and 40% have already made redundancies.” Clive Wratten, chief executive
of the Business Travel Association, warned: “We see one in two jobs at risk in corporate travel. We’re talking to the government about extending furlough to the end of the year.”
Joss Croft
De Vial: Firms with trust accounts have faced same refund problems
Travel companies using trust arrangements to protect consumers’ cash have faced many of the same difficulties in refunding customers as other businesses, according to Abta director of financial protection John de Vial. He told an Elman Wall Covid-19
webinar: “Many of the trust arrange- ments and companies using them have been in exactly the same posi- tion as everyone else [on refunds]. “Many allow prepayments,
protected by Safi [scheduled airline failure] insurance. They have exactly the same problem [as the rest of the sector] if the airline has not refunded the money.
“Some have been able to pay
refunds, but that is through their financial arrangements not their financial-protection arrangements.” De Vial insisted: “Not all of a
consumer’s payments are there [in a trust] until the holiday is taken. The beauty of bonding is it is independent of the booking. Both systems have their issues.” Abta has until now ruled out
the use of trust accounts to protect pipeline payments between members. But De Vial promised: “Abta is going to have another look at this. Maybe there is a form of trust account that holds all the customers’ payment until travel.”
Abta: Expired RCNs must be paid Ian Taylor
Consumers who accepted refund credit notes with a July 31 expiry date should receive cash refunds now regardless of whether suppliers have refunded travel businesses, Abta has confirmed. Abta director of financial
protection and financial services John de Vial said: “We’re moving to ensuring members are honouring Refund Credit Note expiry dates, and the first of these is July 31. Delivery of the promised refund is going to be important to maintaining the integrity of Refund Credit Notes.” Speaking on an Elman Wall
Covid-19 webinar, De Vial said: “Recovering refunds from suppliers is separate from refunding consumers. The end date for refunding the consumer has to be fulfilled. “If the consumer will agree to have it extended, that is fine where
t
ravelweekly.co.uk
it is done by agreement. The cruise industry is providing some very good incentives to consumers to do that. That is a commercial intervention. But if a customer wants their refund it does have to be honoured.” De Vial insisted: “This is about
balancing different rights and interests. No one wants to do anything other than refund consumers normally, [but] we recognised a lot of our members could not refund people within 14 days. “If the regulator had enforced
that, we would have seen multiple failures. Would that have served the consumer interest? I don’t think so. If we had multiple failures it would take even longer to refund consumers than with Thomas Cook, which took six months. “We created a window [with
Refund Credit Notes, but] these refunds will have to be made within that timescale [of expiry].”
De Vial suggested that “where
companies have been refusing refunds, they are principally online booking platforms, the wedding sector for some reason, and hotel booking sites”. Business Travel Association (BTA)
chief executive Clive Wratten rejected the suggestion that airlines had been quicker to refund consumers direct than via intermediaries, saying: “I haven’t seen that. They have been pretty slow with everyone.” Wratten told the webinar: “The
BTA had more than £200 million in outstanding refunds at one point. We’ve started to see refunds from Lufthansa, KLM, Norwegian Air. The amount of refunds outstanding has shrunk significantly.” As travel restarts, he said: “We
don’t want refunds for travel now to go to the end of the queue. We want to be able to refund through the GDS.” Airline refunds via GDSs have
been largely suspended since March. 9 JULY 2020 John de Vial 33
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