The grant was announced on 21 December as part of a £1 billion support package for the hospitality sector. It was initially thought the money was reserved for businesses in that sector, however Abta later confirmed the cash would be available to travel businesses too.
However agents and operators have described the painful process in applying for a share of the funding, with a postcode lottery seemingly determining the success of applicants.
Speaking during a TTG panel on 5 January, Diane Palumbo, sales and marketing director of Skiworld and spokesperson for Seasonal Businesses in Travel said it was a “relatively long” process which would have resulted in “tiny amounts of money” and she said the grant was better suited for retail.
“The thing that would have been a benefit [for us] would have been the VAT relief or business rates relief,” she added.
TTG+ members can watch the panel discussion in full here
Gemma Antrobus, owner of Haslemere Travel agreed the application process was “horrific”.
“What they wanted to know in order to get this money was just ridiculous - inside leg measurements, copies of rent payments, I can’t even tell you it took and because it was so long. And at that point, we were so busy, because this was before the restrictions came, I didn’t apply straightaway.”
However she said in her area she was aware a local tour operator had applied straightaway and been given the funding “within a couple of weeks”.
“I know that I’ve had an email to say it looks like I will be approved, but I don’t know how much we will get,” she added.
“I also know of other agents in different boroughs who’ve been successful - some have been very successful and have had larger payouts. But I also know agents who’ve been told a flat no,” she added.
Antrobus highlighted the challenges for agencies with two or three branches in different boroughs – “you’ve got some councils who were great and some councils that aren’t. It just seems crazy,” she said. “Even copying the templates that have been circulated saying ‘we know you have X amount of money, where is my share?’, agents have basically been told to go away. There’s no uniformity to any of this. My advice to anybody is to just keep going, because unless you are told a flat no, then the answer isn’t no, it’s still yes.”
Kelly Cookes, leisure director at Advantage Travel Partnership said she had also heard of “horror stories from businesses that are desperately needing that money and have been flatly refused”.
“On the flip side, I have also heard some success stories where people have got really reasonable payouts, which will help them so our advice is to keep going but also to keep looking at all those other costs,” she said. “Can you delay any of the other grant repayments? Loan repayments? Can you renegotiate all of those things that we’ve all been doing as business owners throughout this?”
Cookes added that even if agents had been told “no” to extra funding by their local authority, they should keep pushing. “It depends who picks up your form and reads it - it really is that much of a scenario and it could be that you apply two weeks later and actually the local authority is in a different place with their funding and how they’re divvying it out.”
TTG+ members can watch the panel discussion in full here
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