Advocating for ABTA Members and supporting them through the ongoing coronavirus crisis is our number one priority. This remains the case even as we see more positive news such as yesterday’s announcement on quarantine rules for US and EU inbound travellers and the restart of international cruises. However, there are a number of other areas that ABTA continues to work hard on to represent Members’ interests – including the consultation on ATOL reform, airline insolvency, Brexit and more recently the Package Travel Regulations 2018.

You may remember that when the EU Package Travel Directive became part of UK law in July 2018, a review of the regulations was planned for the future. This would offer the chance to see how the regulations have worked in practice and iron out any issues.  

With the UK no longer a member of the EU, any review of the regulations is down to the UK Government, although it is worth noting that the EU is carrying out its own review and we are engaging with colleagues at ECTAA as part of that.

The Government is starting to look at the Package Travel Regulations 2018 and we are currently engaging with officials and attending a range of workshops about the regulations. This is the very beginning of the process, with Government in the early and informal stages of scoping out what a review may look at. There is little information or detail to be able to share with Members at the moment, but we will feed back to and engage with Members once we have more information. In the meantime, if you have any questions, you can contact publicaffairs@abta.co.uk.

Mark Tanzer, Chief Executive