The association slammed the “unwarranted and sensationalist” reporting from consumer media of the Payment Services Directive 2 (PSD2) - prohibiting firms from charging customers for paying by debit and credit cards.

Aito said it believed that an EU-legislated cap on bank charges for credit and debit card transactions of 0.3%, adopted in the UK on June 2015, should have aided consumers.

However the association argued that the UK government allowed banks to bypass the ruling, as they “simply increased other administrative fees negating any consumer advantage”.

“This has nullified the intended benefit to consumers,” Aito said.

As a result, Aito claimed: “The consumer media has been misled both by government and bankers in this connection [to the new surcharging ban] – and the media, in turn, has misinformed the public.

“The villain is actually the banking sector, which should be called to account by government and required to lower its fees and to curb its super profits.”

Aito maintained that the travel industry typically worked on very low margins – with 1.5% profit before tax not an unusual occurrence.

Absorbing the typical 2% bank charge on credit cards while operating at “such tiny margins is thus impossible,” it said and would in turn force up holiday prices.

“[Surcharging] is not profiteering – it is simply recharging the cost charged to travel companies by the card companies,” Aito argued.

To soften the financial blow of the surcharging ban Aito encouraged its operator members to increase their commission rates by 0.5% in an attempt to help its affiliated agents cope.

Derek Moore, Aito chairman, said: “There is no doubt that this a dog’s dinner of a mess – all totally avoidable had the government listened to the travel industry and concluded that control of the UK’s wayward, profiteering bankers was an essential part of the scenario.

“The solution is for the government to address this unfair state of affairs – of which they are fully aware – quickly, to avoid lasting damage to the SMEs of the travel industry.

“Government needs to freeze bank charges at the 0.3% level originally required by the EU.

“I urge Mrs May and her Treasury colleagues to pay careful attention to this parlous state of affairs and to take action, both to protect the consumer from the misery of unnecessary debt and also to protect the specialist agents and specialist tour operators in the UK from having to incur such nonsensical costs courtesy of our Fat Cat banking industry.

“Voters will doubtless thank her, too, for preventing a totally unnecessary increase in their holiday prices.”