I work for a company who has advertised on Teletext for many years. One thing I would say about teletext (and this could be due to lessons learned in the past), they do not allow anyone to advertise without the correct bonding, e.g. All agents must be part of ABTA.

This isn’t to say your friend wasn’t wrong not to know more about them, the amount of people we have ring us up, who cannot remember who they booked with, a reference number or any other details for that matter, they just work there way through a load of teletext numbers again until they find out!

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In the main I don’t beleive the general consumer would pass a thought about ABTA until something goes wrong, you may hear somebody say ‘ I’ve checked and they are ABTA bonded’, but in reality they haven’t got a clue what that means.

I don’t want to do them any favours, but you have to jump through hoops now to advertise on text, but as I said before this is very much due to lessons learnt in the past, which is where the bad reputation comes from.

Also on the price issue, a high percentage of Teletext advertisers are now ‘Homeworkers’ which whilst most are self employed are backed and bonded by some of the UK’s biggest agencies. They also often discount heavily to get a booking, so whilst this is bad for the industry long term, consumers like your friend will often save in the short term.

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I never knew Teletext still existed.

I imagined with the internet, the Teletext would of lost milions of viewers.

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Hi.

Darren, you are right, customers should make sure that they are booking with a reputable company. However the spate of ‘Bust Outs’ in the industry, which caused ABTA to change their policy on bankruptcy, included some companies that were ABTA members. So travellers need to educate themselves on what to look out for when booking. Also understanding the difference between ATOL and ABTA bonding.

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Hi Jon ,

As Head of Compliance at Teletext I am the first to advise that consumers should check out who they are booking a holiday with.

Darren is correct we do vet every advertiser very carefully indeed. No other media portal carries out the extensive vetting and checks we carry out on every potential advertiser both before and after they join us. This is not to make it difficult for advertisers, but rather to ensure that our consumers can be assured that they are dealing with genuine travel companies.

I head the two bodies that are fighting fraud within the industry and Teletext has committed a lot of time and resource in trying to stamp out fraud at all levels across the industry – even though this is not something that generally happens on Teletext. indeed we worked with the Metropolitan Police, ABTA and the CAA very closely to bring about the recent successful prosecution of Chris Philippou and gang. I do not believe any other media portal would do this.

Hopefully we spot any issues and deal with them before they affect consumers – and this is borne out by our track record.

On the pricing. Teletext is one of the few places that every top brand is competing and so they have to show their best prices to get noticed. In addition Darren is correct about the discounts, I have seen some truly fabulous deals advertised. How do i know they are available? Teletext maintains a dedicated team that spend their lives mystery shopping every advertiser. They spend their lives duplicating the sort of search that consumers do and concentrate on the cheap and popular. We have the toughest rules in the business and always punish those that break them. This is why we have been working with ABTA on transparent pricing for a number of years. We are confident that our advertisers prices cannot be beaten.

Every advertiser on Teletext is rated for compliance performance and we have made it plain what standard we require to everyone. In the next year we will gain access to the systems advertisers use and so will be able to give a high degree of assurance about the prices shown.

Barry

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Hi Darren,

Teletext occupies a very important place in the travel portfolio and many millions of people happily view our advertiser’s products and book their holidays through us. For this reason I think that the TV will remain an important area going forward. In addition we operate some of the top sites on the internet and even through SMS phone alerts. Anyone selling a package holiday must be a member of one of the well known trade bodies.

No one else comes close to doing the checks we do nor having the stringent rules we have. We insist on trade body membership for package holidays.

As I said before I agree with you that consumers should do their own checks after all if its not on Teletext you could be dealing with anyone – including a fraudster.

Barry

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Darren,

why don’t you pop over sometime and see what you do for yourself?

We are completely transparent and proud of our operation.

Regards

Barry

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