Hurricanes highlight value of bonding – TravelMole Comment by J Skidmore

A week – or two – is a long time in the travel industry.

Very recently ABTA was, with some justification, being criticised in all quarters following the collapse of Travelscene.

ABTA and the short break operator’s sales director John Harding who, of course, was the association’s president, championed the consumer protection they offered. Unfortunately, one of Travelscene’s subsidiaries, Citybedz, was unbonded.

We all know that no laws were broken and it was quite possible for an ABTA member to have an unbonded subsidiary. But, as I said in an earlier comment, the whole system is incomprehensible to holidaymakers and impossible to justify.

Sensing a PR disaster, ABTA decided it would pay out to Citybedz customers anyway.

Questions over the role of ABTA and the point of booking with a bonded company subsided.

More recently, attention has been focused on the hurricanes wreaking havoc in parts of Florida and the Caribbean.

It would be inappropriate to make flippant remarks about events which have cost lives and wrecked homes.

But, unquestionably, the way ABTA-member tour operators have looked after their customers in the wake of hurricanes Frances and Ivan must have been like a breath of fresh air to the association.

Virgin Atlantic had around 8,000 people in the area and Thomson Holidays around half that number. They, and other tour operators, have provided people with extra accommodation, food and drink for those unable to leave and arranged extra flights to take them home when airports have re-opened.

Some people have needed to be switched to alternative hotels and that has all been sorted out with the minimum of fuss.

Not only that, tour operators have had staff on the ground to provide re-assurance during a potentially frightening period.

The companies, which have bonds with the Civil Aviation Authority and are members of ABTA, have rightly been wary about making too much political capital out of the tragedies. But the value of travelling on a package holiday has been highlighted like never before.

Anyone independently arranging their own accommodation in Florida or the Caribbean would have been stranded, facing the prospect of extra bills to stay on if they couldn’t get home. There would have been no friendly rep to help and advise them or, if necessary, arrange alternative hotel accommodation.

Suddenly the public has realised the value of bonding.

Every cloud has a silver lining.