Travel businesses that are due to renew their ATOL licence must apply for a renewal as soon as possible and those yet to meet their licence conditions must do so or face losing their ability to sell package holidays after 30 September 2021.
With just one week left before the deadline, there is still a variety of different sized travel companies that are yet to apply to renew their ATOL: around 20% of businesses.
Commenting, Michael Budge, Head of ATOL Licencing at the UK Civil Aviation Authority, said:
“We appreciate the challenges the travel industry has faced over the past 18 months and thank those travel businesses that have already submitted their application and supporting information for renewal in good time.”
“We are continuing to work closely with many businesses to support them with their licence renewal. However, applications must be thoroughly assessed and where licence conditions are required these must be met before the new licence can be granted. Therefore, it is very important that those businesses that have not yet submitted their applications do so as soon as possible to avoid delays to their ability to sell package holidays.”
Notes to editors
If a new ATOL is not granted before the current one expires, the business will no longer hold an ATOL and will be unable to transact business which is legally required to be covered under ATOL.
This means businesses would have to:
- Stop taking new licensable bookings
- Stop accepting payments for existing licensable booking
- Instruct agents (if applicable) that they should not accept any new bookings or any payment
- Stop advertising licensable business and remove all references to ATOL on your website/s and other publicity/promotional material.
In addition, there would be a breach of the ATOL Regulations if businesses continued to hold bookings for customers that have entered into licensable transactions. This means businesses would have to notify all customers due to travel after 30 September 2021 that they cannot provide their travel arrangements and provide a full refund of all monies paid.
Any company seeking assistance in renewing can contact the Civil Aviation Authority's ATOL team: atolonline@caa.co.uk or their usual contact.
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