Are Trust Accounts or Bonding Better For Your Travel Business?

Whether trust accounts or bonding are better for your business is, in all honestly, entirely up to you. We can tell you that our preference is trust accounts (which is good considering we’re running one), and a bonding provider can tell you that they prefer bonding. Even a hundred other travel agents could tell you which one they use or prefer. Ultimately though, no one knows what your business needs better than you do.

So, we’re not going to tell you that a trust account is the best fit for you, we have no way of knowing that for certain. But, we know this is a tough decision to make. This choice could change how you run your business and you want to ensure you’re confident. So while we can’t tell you what will work best for you, we can help make it a little easier to brainstorm the differences.

Trust Accounts or Bonding: What are the Differences?

First, let’s clarify: when you are choosing whether to use travel trust accounts or bonding, you are also usually choosing what type of support model you want to use. This is generally because the easiest way for a travel business to acquire financial protection is with a support provider.

This means that when you are choosing the type of financial protection your business needs, you are also going to be thinking about what type of support you might want outside of that.

So, before anything else, let’s break down the core differences you will most likely find between a trust account support model, and a bonding support model:

These are the basics, but of course, the package these differences come in can vary. For example, if you are looking for a support model that provides marketing assistance, that might be a higher priority to you than having a large choice of suppliers. Equally, if you are specifically looking for more flexibility in how you run your business, it might not matter to you at all whether your provider uses trust accounts or bonding.

This is part of the reason why this decision can be difficult. You’re not just choosing what type of financial protection you want, you’re also choosing how much control you are keeping of certain aspects of your business.

If you are looking to be a homeworker under a consortium, then you may not want to be responsible of certain areas, such as having your own ATOL, or choosing specific suppliers. In that case, you may lean more towards a traditional bonding model, not for the financial side, but because that is how more consortia-models operate.

It is also important to keep in mind that this will most likely change over time. When you first launch your travel business, trust accounts or bonding may not even be a question you care about. You may be looking for help understanding this industry and entering it for the first time. Later, you may decide that you’ve got the hang of things and you want more control, or you take more of an interest in the specific financial protection you’re using beoynd PTR compliance.

On the other side of things, maybe you start your business completely independent, but down the line some parts of it are just too much work, and so you want to operate under a consortium instead.

Regardless of your journey, choosing what fits your business needs best is what’s going to help you grow. Whether it’s trust accounts or bonding, what matters is the choice that is going to allow you to succeed. We are in a great era in travel at the moment, you have so many choices for how you want to run your travel business. While that can be overwhelming at times, it means that your business is entirely in your hands.

And if you would like to find out more about what a trust account model could look like for your business, check out our trust account page. Or, if you’d like to talk through your options with our team, call us at 0207 190 9988 or email hellopts@protectedtrustservices.com.