The full impact on other Atol holders of Thomas Cook’s collapse is expected to be felt most keenly in coming months, a leading industry lawyer has warned.
The September Atol figures are due to be released on Monday (28 October), after the CAA extended existing Atols to 25 October.
Alan Bowen, legal advisor to the Association of Atol Companies, told TTG Cook’s collapse was unlikely to affect this round of renewals because documentation and accounts had already been submitted before Cook’s collapse on 23 September.
“It’s over the next year and future renewals where it will have a real impact,” he said. “A lot of Atol holders have lost money because Cook was taking full payments so far in advance – 18 months for one of my clients.”
The latest Atol figures show On the Beach, which renews its licence every April, has replaced Cook as the third largest Atol holder with 1.65 million passengers.
Loveholidays moves up to fourth place with an Atol for 1.37 million.
Preliminary publicly available figures show Tui UK and Jet2holidays retained the top two spots as the largest Atol holders.
Tui UK told TTG it intended to let the CAA “know about our intention to increase our Atol”, while Jet2 has so far increased its licensable passengers by 105,000 to 3.9 million for the same period.
Tour operators can apply to the CAA to increase their licence to carry more package passengers at any time following renewal.