ATOL Franchise

Every UK travel organiser selling flights, flights and accommodation or flights with other travel services is required to hold an ATOL, which stands for Air Travel Organisers Licence. ATOL is a government-run financial protection scheme operated by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA).

ABTOT has been a CAA Franchise holder since 2017 which enables ABTOT Members to apply for an ATOL through ABTOT Membership without having to meet the CAA’s increased financial criteria.

ABTOT ATOL Franchise Holders benefit from reduced application fees and reduced APC payments. Franchise Members may require additional bonding for their flight inclusive packages, subject to underwriting assessment, as well as an insurance backed Travel Bond for their non-flight packages. The ABTOT team will help with your ATOL application and quarterly declaration submissions and as the ABTOT ATOL Franchise is guaranteed by travel bonds, the administration is simple and straightforward enabling you to focus on selling holidays not constantly declaring them.

If applying direct to the CAA for a new Small Business ATOL, the CAA requires travel organisers to have a minimum paid up share capital of £30k and to arrange a £50k bond, which which tends to reduce by £10k every year for the first five years.

If you apply for the ATOL Franchise there is usually no additional financial criteria on top of ABTOT’s Membership criteria of £10k paid up share capital and the bonding requirements are half that of the CAA’s requirements, namely £25k in the first year, with again the intention to reduce by £5k every year for the first five years, generally less than the CAA requirements, but this will be subject to an underwriter assessment.

ABTOT: Single point of contact for ATOL, Travel Bonding and Merchant Acquiring Facilities.

Roland Hunter, Managing Director FRGS, The Mountain Company

“Thanks for your help with our ABTOT/ ATOL renewals and I am delighted that we have already completed this process by early August (for the September 2022 renewal date). The support and assistance from the team at ABTOT have been first-class. This has made our renewals in 2022 very efficient and has saved us a lot of management time. This means we can now get back to planning and operating our trips to the Himalayas during a very busy year of travel for us. I would highly recommend ABTOT and Travel & General and the range of services they provide to the travel industry. Thanks again!”