To illustrate how badly the upgrade was needed, consider what happens currently at a typical Atol renewal. Paper application packs (comprising around five assorted application forms, addendums, checklists and returns) are posted (in an envelope, remember them?) to around 1,000 Atol holders. Each applicant has to complete the

application forms (using a pen, remember them?) and post them back to the CAA.

Each one of those 5,000 paper forms has to be checked by someone at the CAA and typed back into its creaking database. This cycle is repeated twice a year, and has remained largely unchanged since 1973.

Technology upgrades don’t come cheap, and spending travel industry money always needs to be justified, but that’s easy enough when you consider the sheer volume of resources tied up with paper shuffling. The upgrade will soon pay for itself when these resources are allocated to more rewarding pursuits, such as spotting the next tour operator heading for failure or helping to take down the fraudsters who swindled £11.5 million out of British holidaymakers last year, according to a recent report from the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau.

Of course the best technology- driven companies remember to combine the slick online experience with superb offline customer service for those rare occasions when it all goes belly-up. Fingers crossed that the CAA delivers the slick technology but doesn’t forget about the second bit.