Magellan Travel Group will wait for full details of insolvency insurance policies currently being drawn up for travel agents before deciding whether to take out group-wide cover for its members.
UK-based International Passenger Protection (IPP) is working on policies that will provide financial protection for travel agents and consumers in a post Travel Compensation Fund era.
Magellan chief executive Andrew Macfarlane, who is on AFTA’s Travel Industry Transition Plan working party, said: “IPP will bring products to market and everyone wants the details around that.
“Our members would like us to pursue the intermediary insurance cover and we haven’t made a decision yet whether we will do that on behalf of our members’ or whether they will do it individually.
“We can’t make a decision yet because we are waiting to see the industry solution. But we do believe in intermediary insurance cover.”
Macfarlane said Magellan has been “fully supportive” of AFTA’s reform and of the creation of an accreditation scheme.
He said he was in favour of “industry-wide” insurance cover but said players would be free to create their own schemes.
“We’d be free right now to go off and negotiate with a vendor if we wanted,” he said.
He added that AFTA does not believe consumers should only have to rely on Australian consumer law in the event company failure.
“They wouldn’t be organising this with IPP [if that was the case],” Macfarlane said.
