Who needs a travel agent when you can put together a holiday with a few clicks of the mouse?
Conventional wisdom says that High Street agencies and even some package tour operators are facing the same fate as the dinosaurs, that the communications revolution will make them redundant.
Think again. New research by the Civil Aviation Authority suggests that unless you check that the company you choose complies with British law, buying via the internet could seriously damage your financial health. In a recent and exhaustive trawl, its officials identified no fewer than 800 travel firms trading on the web but providing no evidence that they were licensed.
In Britain, it is illegal for agents or operators to sell air packages or flights unless they are covered by an Air Travel Organiser's Licence. In order to get one, a company must convince the CAA that it is financially sound and arrange a bond or some other guarantee so that, should the firm go bust, travellers do not lose their money.
Some firms offering deals on the internet do hold such licences. Indeed, many of those which are apparently breaking the law may be routing customers through licensed agents or operators - but have simply neglected to make the fact clear. But there is a clearly a danger that low prices will tempt unwary consumers into booking with companies which are not.
Why should this pose such a huge potential problem? After all, most travellers booking through the web are likely to use credit cards - and the Consumer Credit Act covers consumers for purchases of £100 or more if a company ceases trading. But there are several good reasons why this may be cold comfort. For example, the law also obliges agents selling cut-price flights to be covered by licences - and many cheap short-haul tickets cost less than £100. In addition, an agent may try to sell you the component parts of the trip - air travel, care hire and hotel rooms, separately. Again, each purchase might not reach the £100 threshold.
A third and even more cogent reason is that bonds demanded by the CAA are not just used to refund customers who have booked but have yet to travel when an operator goes under; they also help fund the rescue of holidaymakers who are abroad at the time of a collapse. If the bonds prove inadequate to pay all the bills, the back-up Air Travel Trust fund can be tapped to cover the shortfall. Book with an unlicensed operator and you would have to pay your own way home.
The CAA is bringing a prosecution against one internet outfit, which was allegedly posing as a customer to buy cheap air tickets and selling them on as part of packages. By operating this way, it avoided awkward questions from the airline about its lack of a licence.
Officials say some of the 800 firms identified are based abroad and are not subject to UK law in any case. This creates a further headache. To tackle it, the CAA may have to secure the co-operation of equivalent regulatory authorities in other countries. The potential scale of the problem emerged at a recent conference of independent travel agents in Tunisia. The 200-plus agents, members of the Advantage consortium, spent time fretting over the threat to their business from the web and, more acutely, from digital interactive television.
Advantage is already erecting defences. One weapon is specialisation, which means the customer can go to a one-stop shop for, say, cruises or ski holidays. A good example is Paul Brooks, who owns a single agency in Stockport. He has ensured that when web surfers tap "weddings abroad" into their search-engine windows, his firm's site is always among the first to come up.
Advantage has created a common site with links to individual members (www.advantage4travel.com). In this way, each will benefit from a central pool of expertise. Customers accessing it will be directed to their local consortium agent, who will earn commission from most online bookings. But they will also be able to enter the specific kind of holiday they want - and be connected to a specialist. They will receive e-mail advising them of special deals in their field of interest and eventually bid for flights and holidays at auction.
The risks of consumers arranging their own holidays on the internet was also addressed at the conference. Yet it may prove to be one of the small agent's strongest lifelines. Consumer organisations are often scathing about the lack of knowledge displayed by some agency counter staff. Holidaymakers who have had their fingers burned at the keyboard may take a more charitable view.
