Holidaymakers look to ABTA for Egypt reassurance
ABTA admitted today its consumer advice line was handling an increasing number of calls from holidaymakers concerned about travelling to Egypt.
In total, its customer services team dealt with 14,826 enquiries in the 12 months up the end of June, and it said many of the calls were from members of the public wanting to find out more about destinations that have featured in the news for political or economic reasons.
A spokesman said the number of calls had increased in recent weeks due to concerns from customers travelling to Egypt, although not specifically the Red Sea resorts.
Other calls were from consumers with queries about financial protection or looking for assistance in resolving complaints with travel companies.
In the majority of cases where there was a valid complaint, ABTA was able to quickly settle the complaint between the consumer and its member, the association claimed.
In total, 407 complaints were referred to ABTA’s independent arbitration scheme, which was a similar number to the previous year, said the spokesman.
At the same time the department has improved its average response time to consumer complaints from seven to five days, helped by an increasing number of consumers using the online complaint form, up from 50.5% to 55.5%.
Charles Fachiri, ABTA senior consumer affairs manager said: "I am pleased that at a time when the public is increasingly turning to ABTA for advice we have been able to significantly reduce our response times.
"We’ve done this partly by streamlining our procedures and moving more and more correspondence online but also through the hard work of a dedicated, expert team.
"We are also seeing many more consumers choosing to phone us for advice, some of them with complicated problems, some simply needing reassurance about a destination. Our work not only helps them, we are also able to reduce the pressure on our members’ customer services departments."
Linsey McNeill
Editor Linsey McNeill has been writing about travel for more than three decades. Bylines include The Times, Telegraph, Observer, Guardian and Which? plus the South China Morning Post. She also shares insider tips on thetraveljournalist.co.uk
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