Slow to learn lessons and even slower to act

The winding up of Dream World Travel is yet another damming indictment of the shameful state of financial regulation in Travel. This failure raises questions, not least for the CAA and DFT who have dawdled over ATOL reform for years.

Once again a travel company with an ATOL licence has been allowed to trade down to the last few Pounds of their Clients money. Dream World failed owing £10.2M and had just £25,000 of Client money left. They were in such a poor financial state that the liquidation has not yielded enough to pay the liquidators fees, let alone anyone else.

It seems likely they were trading whilst insolvent for some time prior to their failure in July 2022.

It is possible that Dream World didn’t give accurate management accounts or booking numbers to the CAA. However, the CAA open themselves up to failures of this sort by allowing Client money to be misappropriated and spent on things other than their holiday. The repetitious ATOL reform documents show they know this use of Client money as ‘working capital’ is the problem, yet they shilly-shally.

Thomas Cook’s failure in 2019, with only a fraction of Client money remaining, resulted in a massive bill for taxpayers and the Air Travel Trust, prompting an ATOL consultation. Yet 54 months on from the Thomas Cook failure we are still waiting for reform!

The required reform is simple. ATOL holders should have three choices. Click here to view the simple solution for ATOL reform

Delay does a disservice to the Travelling public, Tax payers and to the Travel Industry: The only major industry without proper financial regulation.