Close reading

Two regulations, one phrase, two slightly different definitions

Two statutory instruments, drafted six years apart, both reach for the same idea in order to take business travel outside the protection a consumer would get. They are close enough that they are usually summarised as saying the same thing, and they nearly do. Read next to each other, they are not identical, and the differences are worth ten minutes.

The two definitions

The ATOL Regulations, at reg 10(3), define a general business travel agreement as:

an agreement which is concluded between a trader and another person, for the purpose of booking travel arrangements in connection with that other person’s trade, business, craft or profession

The Package Travel Regulations, at reg 3(3), define a general agreement as:

an agreement which is concluded between a trader and another person acting for a trade, business, craft or profession, for the purpose of booking travel arrangements in connection with that trade, business, craft or profession

What is the same

The architecture. Both define the agreement rather than the trip, which is the drafting choice that does all the work. It means the question is never “was this a business trip” — a question that would be miserable to administer and easy to argue about — but “was it booked under an agreement of this kind”. An agreement is a document. It either exists or it does not.

Both also use the same four-word formula for what the other party does: trade, business, craft or profession. That phrasing is lifted from consumer-protection drafting generally, and it is broad. A sole practitioner booking travel for their own practice is inside it.

And neither one mentions size, spend, volume or formality. There is no threshold. A standing arrangement between a two-person consultancy and a small agency can satisfy either definition on its face, in exactly the way a multinational’s agreement does.

What is different

Whose side the sentence is written from. The ATOL version says the agreement is concluded between a trader and another person, and the travel is booked in connection with that other person’s trade. It reads from the supplier outwards: the supplier is the trader, the customer is the other person. The Package Travel version says the agreement is concluded between a trader and another person acting for a trade, business, craft or profession. It puts the buyer’s capacity in the sentence directly.

In practice the two describe the same relationship. The ATOL phrasing infers the buyer’s business purpose from what the travel is for; the Package Travel phrasing states it as something the buyer is already doing when they enter the agreement.

The extra condition. This is the one that has operational consequences. The ATOL exemption at reg 10(1)(h) does not apply merely because a general business travel agreement exists. It applies to a person making flight accommodation available:

under and in accordance with the terms of a general business travel agreement which includes all current terms that have been published by the CAA under paragraph (2)

So the agreement has to include the CAA’s published terms, and reg 10(2) lets the CAA publish and vary those terms, giving at least 28 days’ notice before a variation takes effect. The Package Travel exclusion has no equivalent hook. It excludes the arrangement from the Regulations on the strength of the agreement alone.

That asymmetry is worth knowing for one reason: an ATOL exemption is conditional on something that can change without the parties doing anything.

Why any of this matters to somebody buying travel

Because the two carve-outs are usually mentioned, if they are mentioned at all, as a single fact: business travel is not covered. Read properly they produce a better question than that.

The question is not “are we covered”. It is “which of these two are you relying on, and for what” — and it has a checkable answer. A supplier relying on the ATOL exemption is relying on an agreement that has to carry the CAA’s current published terms. A supplier that holds an ATOL and applies it to corporate bookings anyway is in a different position entirely, and should be issuing ATOL Certificates.

Both are legitimate. Not knowing which one applies to your own programme is the thing to fix, and it takes one sentence in a tender document.

The one-line version

Both regulations say the same thing about business travel. Only one of them attaches a condition to saying it, and that condition sits with the Civil Aviation Authority rather than with either party to your contract.

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