Speaking to TTG editor Sophie Griffiths, the panellists agreed change to the industry would – and should – come following the coronavirus pandemic.
Farina Azam, partner at law firm Kemp?Little, said: “We will see less and less people selling flights as part of packages.
"People have had their fingers burnt and I think they will be looking to push consumers to book directly with airlines for flights.
"We will probably see agents not wanting to collect consumer payment because they don’t want to be the merchants… they don’t want to be hit with chargebacks.”
She added: “They will try to have an agreement whereby money gets paid directly and the commission is dealt with separately.”
Azam explained that agents were feeling exposed to chargebacks despit being an agent for the tour operator, and operators were resentful of having paid “huge advance payments” to suppliers who are refusing to refund.
“You can see the cycle and I think we’ll definitely see the impact of that on the other side [of this crisis],” she said.
Abta chief executive Mark Tanzer agreed travel would be “a different place”, particularly around cash flow.
“People are looking very closely at where the cash is in the system between the customer and the end supplier and who is sitting on that liability when the music stops,” he said.
“It started with Thomas Cook. This industry has lived for a long time on using customer deposits as its working capital.
"These are not strongly capitalised companies.”
Tanzer and Phil Nuttall, managing director of The Travel Village Group, agreed there could be calls for customer money to be held in a “government pot”, which is not paid over until the customer has had their holiday.
“We could well have to do things like that so we don’t end up in a similar situation again,” said Tanzer, agreeing that “potentially travel companies will need to have deeper pockets”.
Nuttall added: “We need a solution to ensure we tax every form of travel so money goes into a trust fund, which the government holds, and if anything happens, it gets paid back.
“[The industry is] going to reboot. There’s no excuse now for not bringing everything in line and protecting the consumer.
"We’ll never get this opportunity again.”
