Speaking at the ACC’s AGM on Monday (April 16), chairman Lindsay Ingram said the government had shown “a total lack of understanding” towards the travel industry.

“Over the last few months, there has been a high level of incompetence and ineptitude,” he said of the government’s failure to even present the industry a draft of the new PTR with just 10 weeks until enforcement.

A Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) spokesperson last week told TTG it would publish the PTR by the end of April after teasing the release last Thursday (April 12). The regulations were subsequently published on Tuesday (April 17).

PTR is part of a range of measures to implement the EU Package Travel Directive (PTD).

However, implementation has been split across three government bodies with the Department for Transport and CAA handling changes to the Atol scheme, and BEIS the new PTR.

The PTD was unveiled in December 2015 and EU member states were given until January 2018 to transpose it into national law. The UK government missed this deadline.

Addressing members, Ingram said the challenges posed by PSD2 and GDPR “paled into insignificance” compared with the difficulties presented by the PTR, especially when parts of it will likely be amended post-Brexit.

“Very few of us are going to be ready,” he said. “The government has not yet discussed the final definition [of a package]... and various departments cannot agree between themselves.”

Alan Bowen, legal advisor to the AAC, branded the government’s oversight for “the biggest regulatory shake-up facing the industry since the early 1990s” a “shambles” after it took BEIS six months to address the 49 responses to its PTD consultation last summer.

Ingram added the AAC feared the final definition of a package would likely to be defined in court when an unwitting agent or package travel provider found themselves in breach.

“It is totally unacceptable for the government to leave us exposed like this,” he said. “We must galvanise the industry. Too long we have rolled over.”

BEIS said the new PTR would ensure online retailers provide the same level of consumer protection high street agents supply (under Atol) and protect an additional 10 million UK package holidays.

Abta said around half of all UK holiday travel arrangements - 20 million packages and three million flight-plus holidays - are currently protected under Atol.

Mark Tanzer, Abta chief executive, stressed until the PTR were published, the announcement only sets out the government’s “expected approach”, adding the timescale was now “very tight”.

There has been widespread criticism of efforts to implement the PTD, with groups such as Abta, Aito and the Association of Atol Companies (AAC) variously stating the proposed changes are too wide-ranging to adopt in such a short space of time.

Abta has previously called for any changes to any of the forthcoming new regulations, especially changes to the Atol scheme, that go beyond what is required by the PTD to be deferred for further consultation and for all three bodies to focus primarily on implementation.

Aito and Abta have both also raised concerns over insurance liability following July 1, with Aito further accusing the government of legislating against the industry.