New guidelines over selling holidays launches
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New guidelines for advertising and selling holidays have been launched by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) and the Office of Fair Trading (OfT).
The new document is aimed at airlines, price comparison websites, travel agents and tour operators to outline clear information on what they must provide customers and what will happen if they break the rules.
Its information includes promoting flight prices with any mandatory fees and that extras can no longer be pre-selected. The watchdogs will review websites and promotional material to ensure they are following the regulation.
“Booking a holiday should be simple. People should be able to make a clear choice and should not be surprised by hidden charges or conditions after they have booked or arrived at their resort or destination. Our guidance makes life easier for consumers by leaving the travel industry in no doubt about its responsibilities,” said Cavendish Elithorn, senior director of the OFT’s Goods and Consumer group.
The new guidelines come comes after a 10-week consultation with the travel industry after a draft was published earlier this year. ABTA welcomed the initiative but raised concerns over the use of the ATOL logo.
A statement from ABTA said:
“We are pleased to see that many of our recommendations made during the consultation period have been included to make the guidelines clearer and more consistent and are confident that ABTA Members who follow our existing guidance and Code of Conduct are well-placed to comply with the relevant laws. Some of the guidelines around information provision may prove technically difficult for travel companies with smartphone and iPad apps due to screen size limitations but we are sure the OFT and CAA will take a sensible approach reflecting the actual impact on consumers.
“We support the emphasis given to clarifying what financial protection is in place and the warning against generic protection statements where not all services are protected, however, and we referred to this point in our consultation response, we are concerned that the guidance appears to suggest that ATOL holders who also sell non-ATOL product, which we suspect is the majority, should not use the ‘ATOL Protected’ logo, which is required by the CAA. This contradiction needs clarification and we will take this up again with the OFT and CAA.”