NEWS in Tokyo. Amie Keeley, Ian Taylor and Hollie-Rae Brader report – SIX-PAGE SPECIAL
‘Operators need customer data in times of catastrophe’
T Phil Evans and Andrea Kendal,
Cruise Nation; Anthony Blackmore, Cruise365; and John Sullivan, The Advantage Travel Partnership
Garry Wilson, easyJet Holidays
he boss of Gold Medal and Travel 2 has described the Atol Certificate as a “joke”
and said tour operators must have full access to customer data in the event of a company failure. John Bevan said it took over a
week for the trade-only operators to get the details of tens of thousands of customers who had booked through Tomas Cook. He said a number had even started to try to rebook holidays. “Te CAA website told customers
that they would get a refund if they booked a holiday with Tomas Cook, but it didn’t clarify what customers should do if they booked a holiday with a third-party operator [through Cook],” he said. “While we were trying to get
information from the liquidators, we started seeing customers rebooking their holidays.” Bevan, who is chief executive
of dnata Travel’s B2B operations in Europe, said he would be changing agency agreements to insist dnata’s
The Atol Certificate
is a joke. It’s literally got the clients’ names, the tour operator and the dates you’re going
operators have customer data. He said: “Te only piece of
information we get is a name; no contact details, because in the past agents were fearful of operators nicking the customer. Basically, that has to change. “Going forward we will need an
email and a phone number. If we’d had that information on the Monday [of Cook’s collapse], we would have sent emails and texts to tens of thousands of people saying ‘relax, I’ve got your holiday covered’. Bevan said he would do so “even if
I haven’t been paid, because that’s my duty as a tour operator. Te contract is between myself and the client. “Hopefully, our agent partners will understand that dnata has no
interest in that data and we will put it in contracts and make it clear that we are only using it should there be a catastrophic issue.” Bevan told delegates: “Te Atol
Certificate is a joke. It’s literally got the clients’ names, the tour operator and the dates you’re going. “It needs to have our details, for
one, and you should have their [the customers’] details on there. Te whole thing has got to move on. It’s a bit old-fashioned. We’ve got to think about the customer.” Ben Bouldin, vice-president
and UK managing director of Royal Caribbean International, said customer data was also needed when hurricanes, typhoons or “anything that changes an itinerary” occurs. He said one of the challenges of
the failure was that Cook had been taking full payments at the time of booking but only the deposits had been passed on to suppliers. “We need to have more
governance around when money is collected and whether payment terms are adhered to.”
Tanzer: Abta would resist any move to increase APC from £2.50
Te head of Abta said the association would resist any increase to the Atol Protection Contribution (APC). Chief executive Mark Tanzer said: “Te failure of
Tomas Cook has made a big dent in the Air Travel Trust fund. When you go back to the insurance market there are likely to be higher premiums. “Te [APC] levy was £1, then went to £2.50. We
would very much resist it changing beyond that.” Asked if the fund could be rebuilt with the existing
fee, Tanzer said: “Yes, I think it can. Tere aren’t many companies on the scale of Tomas Cook, so it doesn’t take long to get back to a fund that is capable of dealing with normal-sized failures.”
travelweekly.co.uk
Mark Tanzer, Abta
He tipped the industry to “realign itself”, adding:
“Tere won’t be people lacking to try and take the £9.5 billion of sales that Tomas Cook had. Tere will be a lot of competition for that.” Abta chairman Alistair Rowland said there was an
urgent need for a full consultation on airline insolvency regulation. “We need travel businesses to focus on their business models and really understand their exposure and the contractual arrangements they have in place,” he said.
i Turn over for four more pages of Abta 2019 coverage, pages 14-17
17 OCTOBER 2019 13
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