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Eventia joins ATOL reform debate to protect small businesses

Eventia has responded to the Government’s consultation on proposed ATOL reform.

As the consultation process closed, Eventia added the voice of the events industry to those who have claimed that reforms proposed by the Department of Transport do not go far enough. 
 
Brian Kirsch, chairman of the Eventia Regulation Committee said: “We support the government’s desire to protect more consumers from travel company failures but when applied to B2B, particularly in the events sector, the current ATOL scheme is flawed. 

“At present a small organiser in the B2B sector can be liable to a major corporate client for the insolvency of an airline, hotel group or other supplier with potentially devastating effects. Satisfactorily insurance against such risks is not realistically available in the B2B sector so we are calling for these liabilities to not apply to B2B transactions with companies of an annual turnover, above a defined threshold of say £1m.  It remains perverse that relatively small companies doing business with large corporations are required to provide those much larger companies with financial protection against their own insolvency and to guarantee their suppliers.”