You Should Choose Trust Over Bonding For Your Travel Business

There are a lot of viable options for ways to support your travel business out there. In many areas, the type of support you choose is entirely dependent on what is going to work for you and help you to succeed at the current stage of your business.

We wholeheartedly believe that your financial protection is not one of those choices.

This isn’t us being up ourselves, don’t worry, we’re not here to tell you that PTS is the be-all end-all for your business. There are still many choices to be made that only you can make. In saying that, we are certain that whatever type of business you’re running, the right travel trust account is always going to be a better option than bonding.

Even at surface level, a trust account sounds more trustworthy. When you use trust, the money a customer pays is held until their holiday is secure and that exact money can be returned to them if needed. In comparison, with bonding, you can do whatever you want with a customer’s monies once they’re paid, and if that customer needs that money back, you’re essentially having to just borrow money to do so.

While some industry voices will argue that there is a lack of freedom with a trust account, this partially relies on which trust account you choose. In saying that, the ‘lack of freedom’ they are complaining about is exactly the thing that allows a customer to trust that you’re not going to run away with their money, so we’re not sure that publicly complaining that you can’t run off with a customer’s money if you so choose to is the most trustworthy move.

But let’s clear this perspective up. In a travel trust account, a customer pays the money into the trust account, this money is then kept safe and monitored while you, the business, sort out their holiday and give them your fantastic service, and then the money is released to you:

1. Customer books holiday and pays into the trust account,
2. This money is separated and reconciled daily,
3. You, the business, get their holiday sorted for them to have a great time,
4. Your profits are released into your bank account.

This isn’t a lack of freedom, this is simply to reassure the customer that you aren’t rushing to spend their money the second they pay for a holiday that you haven’t set up yet. It could very literally be a matter of waiting a few days rather than 5 minutes to access that money, and let’s be honest, any financial decision thought out over a few days is going to be more solid than one made in the span of 5 minutes.

And let’s be clear, that’s not just a huge benefit to your customers. If you can’t spend that money until the holiday is properly secured, that means that if that customer comes back to you for a refund, you’re not going to pay out of pocket, their monies will be returned directly to them and that’s it, no hassle. So while waiting an agonising few days to get your profit, you’re not then going to lose more than your profit if something goes wrong.

This can also vary from one trust to another. For example, at PTS, there are extra measures in place so that money can be released to 1. pay suppliers for the holiday, and 2. give you your profits once the holiday has been set up and expensed, rather than once the consumer has travelled and returned.

This slight disadvantage is also a huge contributor to one of the major advantages: in a situation such as the Covid-19 pandemic, a lot of strain is put on travel businesses when customers rush to cancel bookings. If you are working with bonding, this could bankrupt your business. However, over the course of the pandemic, not a single PTS member closed down due to this issue.

The experience of supporting those members through such an unpredictable and tumultuous time in travel is one of the reasons we are so certain that trust is a better option for any UK travel business.

Whether it’s our trust account, or a different one that works for you better, we don’t care. We simply want you to be able to look at your business and know that if anything so big sweeps the industry again, your business can stay standing while both you and your customers are focused on taking care of yourselves.

To find out more about the benefits of the PTS trust account solution, you can visit our Travel Trust Account page. Alternatively, to find out more about how we protect consumers, please visit our page on consumer protection. For any queries you may have, please contact our experienced and friendly staff by calling 0207 190 9988, or via email to ask@protectedtrustservices.com.