Do you like to travel independently? Maybe you have done a little backpacking or taken time out and enjoyed the pleasure of exploring, discovering local gems and getting off the beaten track. Maybe you try to book locally and pay a fair price (and make sure as much of your money as possible goes to the local economy). So when you need to book ahead and can’t rely on sorting it out on the ground, how do you book with a local company and make sure your holiday is protected? It is a tricky subject, so bear with us…

The package travel regulations were introduced to protect your pre-payments (i.e. deposits) and to provide a reasonable level of safety (i.e. insurance, health and safety). They are well intended, but nowadays they are in a mess. They apply inconsistently across different categories, mislead and confuse people and create competitive advantages for established players – disadvantaging smaller local operators (exactly the kind of businesses independent travellers want to support!) in the destinations we visit (read more about this in this excellent article by Harold Goodwin).

The unfortunate side effects of the package travel regulations is that they encourage the purchase of packages and therefore the continued dominance of the opaque outbound tour operator model. They discourage exploring, rebelling against the crowds and going local. Why? Well, effectively, a small community safari lodge in Botswana, or a trekking outfit on the Inca Trail that sells direct to a UK consumer must, by EU law, comply with the package travel regulations.

Simply put, if they have a website through which a UK customer contacts them and tries to book, then they should have a level of insurance that is often impossible to procure in their countries and a level of financial bonding that is simply unrealistic to expect. You don’t have to be a scientist to work out that this encourages bigger international companies and discourages smaller local companies.

Instead, these opaque outbound tour operators blossom… and we end up with a quasi black market. So is a little transparency too much to ask?

Continue reading this article on the Tourdust blog