Do you remember the summer of 1972? Donny Osmond topped the charts with 'Puppy Love', Crossroads was given its first TV airing and green velvet loon pants were the last word in fashion. If you wanted to impress friends you invited them round for a fondue party and casually let it be known that you were off to Marbella for a week's package holiday and then watched them turn green with envy.
Things have moved on a bit since then. Ponchos, platform heels and even Crossroads have all made comebacks, but the way we travel has changed for ever. Odd, then, that the way our holidays are protected is stuck firmly in a Seventies time warp.
The two main financial protection schemes for holidaymakers - the Air Travel Organisers' Licence and Abta bonding - came into being the same year as Osmondmania and, like the Osmonds, they are starting to show their age. Back then, the vast majority of people were travelling on seven- or 14-night package holidays booked through their high-street travel agent. Buoyed up by state subsidies, scheduled airlines simply didn't go bust. Today, it's a very different picture. Thanks to the rise of no-frills airlines and internet travel sites encouraging people to put together their own holiday packages, fewer than two-thirds of people travelling abroad come under the umbrella of these schemes and - forced to compete with £1.99 fares - scheduled airlines do collapse. Swiss Air and Sabena were two recent casualties; Alitalia is currently looking shaky.
To complicate matters further, even booking through a traditional Abta-bonded tour operator or travel agent is no longer enough to ensure peace of mind. The recent failure of short breaks specialist Travelscene, which was a well-respected Abta tour operator, has shown up yet another hole in the safety net.
For many people the Abta logo represents a guarantee that their money will be safe and they won't be stranded abroad in the event of a failure. Unfortunately, Travelscene was trying to compete with the new kids on the block by running its own accommodation-only subsidiary, which was not bonded.
So despite the reassuring Abta logo on the Travelscene brochure, the customers who booked a hotel through its Citybedz subsidiary will lose any money paid upfront. A spokesman for Abta has since admitted that 'quite a lot' of its tour operator members have sub sidiaries that are not bonded. Meanwhile the Association of Independent Tour Operators (Aito - yes, another four-letter acronym beginning with A) has stepped into the breach to reassure holidaymakers that all parts of its members' business are fully bonded, so your money is safe if you book with them.
Confused? You should be. The current system is so complicated that even lots of people in the travel industry don't understand it. It's time this loosely stitched patchwork of legislation was thrown out and replaced with one mandatory scheme overseen by the government, to ensure that all companies selling holidays, or components of holidays, are licensed.
The Civil Aviation Authority estimates that the cost of a new scheme to cover all holidays would be as little as £1 per passenger and yet the government seems reluctant to tackle the issue. While legislation is stuck in the Seventies, and with predictions of more travel company failures to come, the onus is on travellers to check, before making a booking, who our contract is with and how our money is protected.
