It is quite natural to feel more comfortable booking an expensive wildlife photography holiday with a company based in the UK. You are dealing with a British business, paying in pounds, communicating with somebody in your own country & entering into an arrangement that feels considerably closer to home than sending several thousand pounds to an operator on the other side of the world.
But there is an important distinction that I think photographers should understand: being a UK company is not, by itself, the same thing as providing financial protection for your holiday.
For a qualifying package organised by a UK-established business, the Package Travel & Linked Travel Arrangements Regulations require the organiser to provide effective security protecting travellers’ payments in the event of its insolvency. For non-flight packages, the recognised mechanisms include bonding, insurance or qualifying trust arrangements.
That means the question I would ask before committing thousands of pounds is not simply, “Are they based in Britain?”It is, “Exactly how is my money protected?”
Does being a UK travel company automatically mean your money is protected?
No, & this is where I think consumers need to look a little more closely than the address at the bottom of a website.
A company can be registered in Britain, operate a British website, charge in pounds & communicate from a UK telephone number, but none of those things tells you how the money you pay for your holiday is protected if the company subsequently becomes insolvent.
What matters is the nature of what you are buying & the financial protection attached to it.
Under the current Package Travel & Linked Travel Arrangements Regulations, a UK-established organiser selling a qualifying package is required to provide effective security for travellers’ payments in the event of the organiser’s insolvency. The Government describes three methods available for non-flight packages: bonding, insurance & trust accounts.
That distinction is worth dwelling on because it means I would be cautious about describing a company simply as a “UK tour operator” & assuming everything else follows automatically.
If a business tells you that your wildlife photography trip is not financially protected, the obvious next question is why. It may be that the arrangement being sold does not meet the legal definition of a package, perhaps because the company is genuinely providing only an individual travel service. If it is acting as the organiser of a qualifying package, however, insolvency protection is not merely an optional additional benefit that a company can decide whether it wants to provide. The regulations impose that obligation on the organiser.
For me, that makes the conversation considerably more straightforward. Do not rely on where the business happens to be located. Find out what you are actually buying & what protects the money you are paying.
What should you ask a wildlife photography company before handing over thousands of pounds?
I think the simplest question is often the most revealing: “What financial protection applies to my booking?”
Not, “Are you insured?” That is a different question, because a company can have various forms of business insurance without those policies necessarily protecting the money you have paid if the business fails.
Not simply, “Are you a UK company?” Again, that tells you where the company is established rather than what happens to your money.
Ask specifically how your holiday payment is financially protected in the event of insolvency.
A reputable organiser ought to be able to explain the arrangement clearly. If the trip includes flights & falls within the ATOL scheme, the Civil Aviation Authority says that an ATOL Certificate should be supplied when payment is made for an ATOL-protected booking. ATOL protects qualifying flight-inclusive arrangements against the failure of the travel organiser; it is not personal travel insurance.
For land-only packages, the protection may look different, because the Package Travel Regulations allow appropriate bonding, insurance or trust arrangements instead.
This is something we are very conscious of at NaturesLens because many of our trips represent substantial financial commitments. A photographer may pay a deposit eighteen months or two years before departure, with further payments being made long before they ever board an aircraft. The money involved can easily run into several thousand pounds per person.
Personally, if I were handing that amount of money to any travel company, I would want a proper answer to the question of what happens to it if that company is no longer there when my departure date arrives.
A vague reference to being British would not be enough for me.
What are you actually risking if the UK company has no financial protection?
This is the part that can feel rather theoretical until you consider what insolvency actually means.
Imagine that you have paid £6,000, £7,000 or £8,000 for a wildlife photography holiday taking place next year. The operator has already used some of that money to secure lodges, guides, vehicles or other arrangements, while some may still be sitting within the business. Months before departure, the company ceases trading.
If your qualifying package has effective insolvency protection, there is a mechanism designed to protect the money covered by that arrangement. The purpose of the Package Travel Regulations’ insolvency provisions is specifically to ensure that travellers can be refunded where appropriate, with repatriation also protected where passenger transport forms part of the package & insolvency occurs after travel has begun.
Without applicable financial protection, you may instead find yourself trying to recover money from an insolvent company alongside its other creditors.
That is an entirely different position.
You may have other possible avenues in some circumstances, depending upon how you paid & precisely what happened – card protections, for example, can sometimes be relevant – but I would never regard the possibility of trying to recover money after a company has failed as a substitute for understanding what financial protection exists before making the booking. Indeed, the Government has specifically considered how package insolvency arrangements interact with protections such as Section 75 & chargeback, which itself illustrates that they are distinct mechanisms.
There is also a slightly uncomfortable reality here. Financial protection feels least important at precisely the point when most people book their holiday, because everybody is excited about the trip. You are looking at photographs of bears, eagles, hummingbirds or pumas, reading the itinerary & imagining yourself being there.
Nobody particularly wants to think about the operator going bust.
Yet that is exactly when you need to know the answer, because once the company has failed it is rather late to discover what was protecting your payment.
Is a cheaper unprotected trip really cheaper?
This is where the comparison becomes especially interesting, because establishing financial protection properly is part of operating a travel business responsibly & that structure inevitably forms part of the cost of doing business.
From a consumer’s perspective, however, it is very easy to compare two apparently similar wildlife photography holidays purely on their headline prices.
One costs £5,999 & another costs £6,499.
They visit the same country, perhaps photograph broadly the same wildlife & may even use some of the same lodges, so the cheaper trip can initially look like the obvious choice.
But I would want to know what sits behind each price before deciding which represents better value.
Does one operator provide recognised insolvency protection while the other does not? Are both actually selling packages? Who is contractually responsible for delivering the combination of travel services? What happens if the business fails before departure? Who holds the money in the intervening period? If flights are included, is the appropriate ATOL protection in place?
The CAA makes a similar distinction in the flight-inclusive market: ATOL protection is designed specifically to protect consumers where the travel organiser ceases trading, either assisting those already abroad or providing a route to reclaim protected payments before travel.
For a specialist photographer, I think value needs to be considered even more broadly than that.
When we price a NaturesLens trip, the figure reflects not simply rooms, meals & vehicles but the photographic itinerary we have designed, our relationships with suppliers, small group sizes, guiding, the experience accumulated from previous visits, contingency planning & the responsibility we accept as organiser, alongside the financial protection surrounding the booking.
If another trip appears cheaper, it may indeed be excellent value. I would simply establish that I was comparing like with like before reaching that conclusion.
Why does this matter particularly with specialist photography operators?
Wildlife photography companies are often comparatively small businesses, including NaturesLens, & I actually think that is one of the attractions of travelling with a specialist operator. Guests generally know who is running the company, speak directly with the people designing the trips & frequently travel with those same people in the field.
Pui Hang & I remain very much at the coal face of NaturesLens. We design trips, speak with our guests, work with our guides & overseas partners, solve the logistical problems & lead many of the holidays ourselves. There is no enormous corporate structure sitting between the person booking the trip & the people responsible for delivering it.
But being small & personal does not make the less interesting business infrastructure unimportant.
Quite the opposite.
A guest looking at one of our photography holidays should quite reasonably be far more excited about Brown Bears in Finland, hummingbirds in Costa Rica, Golden Eagles in Sweden or Jaguars in Brazil than the mechanisms used to protect their holiday payments. Nevertheless, we have to think about both.
There are parts of operating NaturesLens that are fascinating – developing new locations, finding better photographic opportunities, changing timings because we have learnt where the light works, talking with guides about animal behaviour & returning from a trip knowing exactly how we can make the next departure even stronger.
There are other parts involving contracts, regulations, financial protection & contingency planning which are considerably less photogenic but just as necessary.
That is why I would not be embarrassed to ask another photography company about its arrangements. A serious operator should understand why you are asking.
You are not questioning whether they are nice people or whether they know wildlife. You are establishing what protects what may be a very substantial advance payment.
What is the difference between financial protection & travel insurance?
The two are complementary, but they protect against quite different things, & confusing them can create a dangerous sense of security.
The financial protection attached to a qualifying package is concerned with the failure of the organiser. Personal travel insurance is there for risks relating to you & your circumstances according to the terms of the policy you buy – for example medical problems, certain cancellation circumstances, baggage & other insured events.
ATOL makes this distinction explicitly: the CAA describes ATOL as financial protection for qualifying flight-inclusive trips & states clearly that ATOL is not travel insurance.
The same principle applies more broadly.
If I became ill shortly before one of our trips & could not travel, my personal travel insurance would be the relevant protection according to its terms. If the travel organiser itself became insolvent, that is a fundamentally different risk.
This is also why statements such as “we recommend that all customers have travel insurance” should not be interpreted as an answer to the question of how the tour operator protects customers’ money.
Of course you should have comprehensive travel insurance. We require appropriate insurance for our guests precisely because specialist wildlife travel can involve remote areas, substantial costs & circumstances that none of us can control.
But your own travel insurance should not be used as a substitute for asking what protection sits behind the company taking your holiday payment.
They are two separate layers, covering different risks.
For photographers investing significant sums in trips that may be booked years ahead, I think understanding that distinction is enormously important.
So how can you book a wildlife photography holiday with confidence?
This is where I think the message becomes reassuring rather than alarming, because checking the position does not need to be complicated.
You do not have to become a travel lawyer before booking a photography holiday. You simply need to ask sensible questions & expect clear answers.
Find out who the organiser is. Establish whether what you are buying is a package. Ask how your payments are financially protected. If the trip includes flights that should be ATOL protected, check the ATOL details & certificate; the CAA provides a facility allowing consumers to verify ATOL holders. If it is a non-flight package, ask what appropriate insolvency arrangements sit behind it.
Then turn your attention back to the far more enjoyable questions.
Who is leading the trip? How many photographers will be in each vehicle? How much time will you actually spend photographing? Has the company operated the itinerary itself? Why were those lodges chosen? What happens when the light changes? Does the itinerary give you time to remain with a productive subject rather than constantly moving onwards? Do the people designing the trip actually understand what photographers need?
Those are the conversations I would much rather be having with somebody considering travelling with NaturesLens.
The financial protection should be there quietly in the background, doing precisely what good protection is supposed to do, while the visible part of the holiday is about wildlife, photography & creating the best opportunities we reasonably can.
Being a British company is certainly relevant, but it should never be the end of your due diligence. The important thing is not merely that your wildlife photography company is in the UK, but that you understand what you are buying, who is responsible for it & exactly what protection stands behind the money you have entrusted to them.
Once you know those answers, you can get back to thinking about the reason you booked the trip in the first place: where you are going, what you might photograph &, with a little luck & a lot of patience, the images you might eventually bring home.
