ATOL Protected Holidays

ATOL is a financial protection scheme for package holidays. Set up in 1973, it was created in response to the growing number of travellers heading overseas.

Until then, there was very little in place to help holidaymakers if their travel company folded.

The main purpose of ATOL is to offer protection to consumers who end up stranded abroad due to the collapse of holiday companies – basically, it helps you to get home. The scheme also offers financial protection by guaranteeing refunds for customers who book either flights or flight-inclusive holidays with companies which collapse before their holiday was due to take place.

The scheme is run by the UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA). You can find out how to contact ATOL using the following here.

ATOL also covers some flight bookings. Usually, this is a flight where you do not receive the tickets immediately after the booking. If you are unsure, always check with your holiday provider.

Simply look for the ATOL logo on your travel company’s website, magazine or brochure. ATOL now operates an easy-to-use database, making it easier for customers to check if they’re protected. You’ll find it here.

Your travel agent will be able to confirm whether they’re a member of ATOL; any holiday company which is a member is legally obliged to provide you with an ATOL certificate explaining how you’re protected. Always ask for this – if the worst happens you’ll be glad you did.

ATOL protection doesn’t cover every type of travel. In the vast majority of cases it doesn’t cover flight-only bookings (although there are some exceptions, as mentioned above, including charter flights) and you’re unlikely to be protected if you booked different aspects of your holiday with different companies.

It’s important to remember that while certain airlines, such as British Airways, offer ATOL protection for their holidays, if you’re only booking a flight, you’re not going to be protected.

ABTA (the Association of British Travel Agents) is an organisation which offers protection to consumers who book with registered travel agents. It does this by getting its members to abide by a strict code of conduct (you can read this here) and guaranteeing that customers who book with an ABTA member will be compensated if disaster strikes.

If you book a holiday with an ABTA-registered travel agent but feel that you didn’t get the holiday you paid for, or the company collapses, ABTA can help you submit a complaint and seek compensation. You can find out more about how to do this here.

However, it’s important to remember that ABTA and ATOL are two different organisations. They both offer consumers protection in the event that a holiday provider collapses or a holiday is mis-sold, but while ATOL offers protection for customers who book package holidays which include flights, ABTA protection only covers rail, cruise and self-drive holidays.

If you feel that you didn’t get the holiday you paid for, it’s important to submit a complaint to your travel agent as soon as possible. Explain clearly why you don’t feel the holiday matched how it breached the implied terms of the contract – in other words, how it didn’t match the holiday described in the brochure or by the travel agent.

If you don’t get a satisfactory response, and it’s a rail, cruise and self-drive holiday, contact ABTA to find out if you’ve got reasonable grounds for a claim and how to seek compensation. If your claim relates to a flight (which was part of a package booked with an ATOL-registered agent), visit ATOL’s Holder Failures website page, which has a constantly-updated list of tour operators which have gone bankrupt, along with claim forms.