Loveholidays.com, Easyjet Holidays and Travel 2 are some of the companies that have seen the biggest rise in
Atol-protected seats over the past year.

TTG has compared CAA data from April 2016 with the prior year to provide a snapshot of the industry.

The information released relates to the number of passengers a company is licensed to carry in a 12-month period.
Companies that have Atols can choose to renew their licences either at the end of March or at the end
of September.

The biggest travel companies mostly renew in September.
While Tui has continued to occupy the top spot, with a modest increase this year, there have been a number of changes underneath. Thomas Cook’s main tour operating arm has seen the number of passengers fall by 22.9% from 3.9 million to 3 million.

In third place is First Aviation, which remains an interesting case. The company effectively offers protection for Monarch’s scheduled business, and as such, shot up the CAA’s rankings following the company’s sale to Greybull Capital in October 2014. Since then, First Aviation has seen the number of passengers it is allowed to carry increase by 48.5% from 1.5 million to 2.2 million.

Biggest increase

The big success story though is Loveholidays.com, which has seen the biggest rise in licensed passenger numbers, despite it continuing to fly relatively under the radar of many in the travel industry.

It has leapt from 23rd to 9th position with a licence to carry 400,000 passengers – up 139.5%.
Other notable increases over the past year include: lastminute.com/ LMnext UK (+121.3%), Hotelopia/ easyJet Holidays (+112.4%), Travelbag (112.4%) and Travel 2 (+103.2%).

The only new company on the list (compared with last April) is BravoNext, which is also associated with lastminute.com and is part of the same Bravofly Rumbo Group.

Two of the travel companies that have seen the biggest year-on-year fall are travel agencies. Hays Travel saw a decline of 43.4% while the Midcounties Co-operative dropped 45.2%. However, the former’s tour operating division has seen a sharp rise in passengers.

Other significant fallers include two members of the Monarch family, Avro (-43.8%) and Cosmos Holidays (-24.3%), as well as Flightbookers/ Ebookers (-26.5%), Hayes and Jarvis (-16.2%) and Travelworld Vacations/ Olympic Holidays (-16.1%).

The total number of protected seats offered by the largest 50 companies has increased from
20.9 million last April to 22.2 million this year.

Rising numbers

Industry expert Andy Cooper, of Owens Cooper Consulting, who conducted his own study earlier this year, said the number of protected seats was on the increase.

“After years of decline the number of Atol-protected seats seems to have swung round. You are actually seeing some increases, which is positive.

“The problem is because they [the CAA] don’t give any detail on those numbers you don’t really get any sense as to whether there’s an increase in the number of packages being sold.”

Cooper said that he had observed a notable shift in the type of companies at the top of the rankings.

“Actually the agency model is much more significant now in that scale, in the top 10. I think it does demonstrate quite clearly the changing face of tour operating.”

He added: “You can just see... some of the shifts in the market place going on here. [There are] lots of names that might have been small retailers a few years ago, [that] are now actually... big Atol holders.”

The CAA previously used to produce a document twice a year entitled Atol Business, which not only noted the number of passengers a company was licensed to carry but also how many it actually did.

The publication was however discontinued in 2007. Details of individual licence holders can now be found on the Atol pages of the CAA’s website, at caa.co.uk