Financial Protection

If you’re acting as an agent, there’s no legal requirement for you to offer financial protection for your customers, but it’s a condition of membership of ABTA that you provide us with a bond or other applicable security for this purpose.

If you're acting as a principal, organising package holidays, the law (the EC Directive on Package Travel (The Package Travel, Package Holidays and Package Tour Regulations 1992-SI 3288/1992)) requires you to have financial protection in place for your customers, as follows:

• All your licensable activity (travel arrangements that include flights) must be bonded with the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA). This means that you must become an ATOL-holder. Business that's covered by an ATOL doesn't have to be bonded with ABTA as well.
• Your non-licensable packages (travel arrangements that don’t include flights) can be protected by way of a bond held by a trade association, e.g. ABTA, or by way of an insurance policy. We don’t accept trust accounts as form of protection.

We can give you guidance on whether or not you're organising packages, and so help you remain within the law, once you've become a Member.

If you're acting as a principal, with single element sales (e.g. accommodation only), the law doesn't require you to have financial protection in place for your customers, but you can choose to do so.