On the Beach off the back of their move to offer ATOL protection to its customers have now decided to allow customers to pay for their holiday 30 days before departure rather than the traditional 90 days still offered by its competitors.
Cynic’s in the industry claim that this because the customers funds are protected in a trust fund and can not be used to fund marketing. Hence, if it can not be spent, why collect it?
To Luke Pollard/ Andy Cohen
Cc Mark Tanzer
Flight Plus TOMS VAT
Luke, as discussed on the phone I am concerned about HMRC seeing Flight Plus as an opportunity to broaden the net of TOM’s VAT to include travel agents that are dynamically packaging. I therefore think its imperative that ABTA as our industry body, seeks written guidance from HMRC as to “exactly” what contractual arrangements must be put in place once Flight Plus ATOL’s are introduced in April 2012.
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You begin to wonder if the CAA is playing a clever game by further delaying the release of the consultation paper on the Flight Plus ATOL reform.
As an industry we seem to be slowly accepting that Flight Plus is inevitable and that we just need to make the most of it, until airlines are brought in sometime in the future via the much needed “Primary Legislation” (Just witness the ABTA Matters debate)
However, even this defeatist attitude still requires the CAA to deal with two fundamental issues. Continue reading
Travel Technology Show Feb 2011. Can you Bypass Google? Continue reading
Surprisingly the Governments press release this week barely bothered to dress up the need to replenish the coffers of the CAA with the gloss of consumer protection. Continue reading
On Holiday Group has brought in ex Monarch Airlines chief executive Peter Brown as a non-executive director. Continue reading
The On Holiday Group owned Holiday Nights website has continued its drive to harness the power of social networking with the launch of the “Google Bypass Scheme” to its customers. The company claims that on average Google is now takes 7.5% of the average online travel sale via PPC click costs, which given an industry average of 12% online commission, makes them the biggest earner from travel in the UK today. The innovative Holiday Nights scheme aims to take £25 of this spend, to incentivise its customers to promote its products via the rapidly growing social networking sites. Continue reading
The On Holiday Group’s new Holiday Nights site, built in conjunction with cutting edge technology partner RateGain, claims to have integrated 10 million user reviews into its holiday search process to allow customers to search by price and user review at the same time. Continue reading