The Package Travel Regulations 2018 dropped the old requirement for a package to be pre-arranged. A combination put together by one trader at the traveller’s request and sold under a single contract is a package, and the government’s guidance says bespoke packages put together by travel agents are covered.

What the organiser must do

The business that builds a tailor-made trip must:

• give the prescribed information before booking, including the standard information form

• take responsibility for every part of the trip, including services run by suppliers

• protect the customer’s money, through ATOL if a flight is included and otherwise through a bond, insurance or a trust account

Example: an agent builds a 14-night Japan trip from a consolidator’s flights, bed bank hotels and a guide and rail pass from a DMC, sold at one price. The agent is the organiser and issues a package ATOL Certificate under its own ATOL or its Accredited Body’s.

Worth knowing

• Selling as an agent for an ATOL holder is not enough. That exemption only covers packages where the agent chooses from services the ATOL holder makes available and the ATOL holder is the organiser, so a business that tailor-makes flight-inclusive trips needs its own ATOL or membership of an Accredited Body.

• Tailor-made is a marketing term. It has no regulated meaning, and the legal test is how the services are combined and sold.

• More trips will be packages from 6 April 2027, when two or more different types of travel service for the same trip, chosen and paid for separately in one visit to or contact with a business, will form a package.

• Calling yourself an intermediary does not help. Since July 2018 an organiser has been unable to avoid its obligations by saying it acts only as an intermediary.