tmcmatchStart with the thing nobody tells you
Almost every guide to choosing a travel management company opens with service levels. This one opens with a regulation, because it is the part that surprises people and the part that is easiest to check.
When a consumer books a flight-inclusive package in the UK, two things are true. The Package Travel and Linked Travel Arrangements Regulations 2018 apply to it, and whoever made the flight accommodation available needs an ATOL. When an organisation books the same trip under a standing agreement with a travel management company, neither of those is necessarily true any more.
The same diagram as a table
| Instrument | Provision | Effect on business travel | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Package Travel and Linked Travel Arrangements Regulations 2018 | reg 3(2)(c) | Excludes “packages and linked travel arrangements purchased on the basis of a general agreement” from the Regulations. | legislation.gov.uk |
| Civil Aviation (ATOL) Regulations 2012 | reg 10(1)(h) | Exempts a person making flight accommodation available under a general business travel agreement from the need to hold an ATOL. | legislation.gov.uk |
| Civil Aviation (ATOL) Regulations 2012 | reg 9(1) | The prohibition the exemption is an exemption from: no one may make flight accommodation available in the UK without an ATOL unless they fall into one of four categories. | legislation.gov.uk |
Both carve-outs turn on almost the same phrase. The 2018 Regulations exclude “packages and linked travel arrangements purchased on the basis of a general agreement” and define a general agreement as “a ‘general agreement’ means 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”. The ATOL Regulations exempt a person making flight accommodation available under a general business travel agreement, defined 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”.
packages and linked travel arrangements purchased on the basis of a general agreementRead it on legislation.gov.uk
This is not a scandal and it is not a loophole. It is a deliberate policy choice: business buyers are assumed to be able to negotiate their own protection, and they are not given the consumer regime by default. The consequence is practical. The financial protection on your travel programme is a contract term, not something the law supplies for you — so it belongs in the tender document, next to the fee schedule.
The question this producesWhere do our lodged funds and deposits sit, what protects them, and which of these two provisions are you relying on? A supplier that can answer that in one sentence has thought about it. One that cannot has not. The full picture, with both regulations quoted.
The eleven questions
The one matching service operating in this market publishes, for every agency it lists, its office count, its
founding year, its headcount, the average experience of its consultants, its typical client size,
its licences and its booking technology. It has collected all of it. It has never once rendered a
comparison table. There is no <table> element anywhere on the site.
So the axes below are not new. What is missing from this market is putting them side by side and saying, for each one, how you would check the answer without taking anyone's word for it. That is the whole of the comparison criteria page. Four of the eleven have a free public register behind them:
| Claim | Register | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|
| Holds an ATOL | CAA ATOL holder search | Returns the licence number, the trading names it covers and the licence status. A supplier that books flight-inclusive packages for you and is not on it is either exempt under reg 10 or should not be doing it. |
| ABTA member | ABTA member search | ABTA is a trade association, not a statutory regulator. Membership brings a code of conduct and, for non-flight arrangements, a financial protection scheme. It is not a licence and it is not ATOL. |
| IATA accredited | IATA accreditation | An IATA numeric code means the agency is accredited to issue airline tickets on IATA carriers' stock and settles through BSP. It is an industry accreditation about ticketing and settlement, not a consumer protection scheme. |
| Financially sound enough to hold your money | Companies House | Filed accounts, filing history, charges registered against the company, and the incorporation date. Free, and the one register that tells you whether the company that holds your lodged funds has ever filed a full set of accounts. |
We are paid a fixed fee for each enquiry, agreed before it is sent. It is the same fee whether the contract that follows is worth twenty thousand pounds or two million, and the same fee if no contract follows at all. There is no supplier on this site we have any reason to push you towards, which is also why you will not find a ranking, a score or a star rating anywhere on it.
What it costs, and the two numbers most people miss
Fee models get all the attention, and they matter — a per-booking charge and a flat management fee behave in opposite directions as your volume moves, and a supplier proposing one is proposing a view about which way yours will go. That is worked through on the cost page.
Two numbers that sit outside the fee schedule tend to move more money than the fee schedule does.
Air Passenger Duty
APD is charged per passenger per flight and is set by destination band and class of travel. It is the one hard, published, checkable cost in business travel that a policy decision moves directly, because the split between the reduced rate and the standard rate is a cabin choice.
The same diagram as a table
| Band | Destination | Reduced rate | Standard rate | Higher rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Domestic | flights within the United Kingdom | £8 | £16 | £142 |
| Band A | 0–2,000 miles from London | £15 | £32 | £142 |
| Band B | 2,001–5,500 miles from London | £102 | £244 | £1,097 |
| Band C | over 5,500 miles from London | £106 | £253 | £1,141 |
Source: GOV.UK — Rates and allowances for Air Passenger Duty, read 20 September 2026. Direct long-haul flights departing Northern Ireland are charged at £0.
VAT under the Tour Operators Margin Scheme
A supply accounted for under the Tour Operators Margin Scheme does not give a business customer recoverable input VAT. HMRC's notice is explicit that business consumption is not outside the scheme: “You cannot exclude supplies which are consumed by a business or its employees, they fall within the scope of TOMS and must be accounted for using the scheme.” (paragraph 3.3). And paragraph 4.19 requires that when a TOMS supply is sold to a business for use in its business, the invoice carries a reference showing TOMS has been applied.
Two quotes for the same itinerary, one inside TOMS and one outside it, are not the same price. Ask which it is, and look for the reference on a sample invoice.
If you already have a supplier, read your own contract first
The most common way a travel review fails has nothing to do with suppliers. It is a notice period in an agreement signed three years ago.
The same diagram as a table
| Milestone | When | Who controls it |
|---|---|---|
| Contract ends | Month 36 | Fixed by the contract |
| Last date to serve notice | Month 33 | Fixed by the contract — this is the real deadline |
| Tender begins in this example | Month 34 | You |
| Result | The tender began inside the notice window. The contract has already renewed. | |
The months above are illustrative. The notice period in your own agreement is the number that matters, and it is the first thing to read before anything else in a review begins.
Work backwards from the notice date. It is the only fixed point in the process and it is already written down. What actually happens when you change supplier sets out the rest of the sequence, including the part that decides how good your next tender will be: whether you can get your booking history back.
Know roughly what you need?
Answer five questions by clicking and send it to up to three suppliers. Contact details are the last step, and nothing on this site is behind the form.
Where to go next
- The comparison criteria
- What it costs
- RFP and ITT template
- ATOL, ABTA and IATA
- Duty of care
- Switching supplier
- What a TMC actually is
- Business travel management
Common questions
What does a travel management company actually do?
It books and services business travel for an organisation under a standing agreement, rather than selling trips one at a time. In practice that means a booking channel, a consultant team, out-of-hours cover, policy enforcement at the point of booking, traveller tracking, and reporting that reconciles against your finance system. The booking is the visible part and usually the least difficult part.
Is business travel protected by ATOL?
Not automatically. Regulation 10(1)(h) of the Civil Aviation (Air Travel Organisers' Licensing) Regulations 2012 exempts a person making flight accommodation available under a general business travel agreement from the need to hold an ATOL. Separately, regulation 3(2)(c) of the Package Travel and Linked Travel Arrangements Regulations 2018 excludes packages bought under a general agreement for business travel from those Regulations. Your protection is therefore whatever your contract and your supplier's own arrangements provide, which makes it a question to ask rather than an assumption to make.
How much does a travel management company cost?
There are three structures — a fee per transaction, a periodic management fee, or a hybrid of the two — plus supplier income the agency earns on your bookings and may or may not pass back. This site explains how each behaves as your volume changes and what to ask about each. It does not publish fee benchmarks, because no primary source for current UK fee levels was read when these pages were written and an invented benchmark is worse than none.
When should we start looking, if we already have a supplier?
Work backwards from the notice date in your current agreement, not forwards from today. Notice periods of three to six months are common, and a review that begins two months before the contract ends has usually already missed the point at which anything could change.
Do you recommend a particular supplier?
No, and we are not able to. We do not rank, score or recommend travel management companies, we publish no reviews or ratings, and we do not hold data that would let us tell you which supplier suits you. What we publish is the set of questions and the public registers you can check the answers against yourself.
Are you a travel management company?
No. tmcmatch.co.uk does not sell, book or take payment for travel and holds no client money. The ATOL prohibition applies to a person who makes flight accommodation available, which we never do, so we hold no ATOL and need none. We publish guidance and sell advertising to travel management companies at a fixed fee per enquiry.
What happens when I send an enquiry?
Your answers go to travel management companies that advertise on this site. No more than three of them may contact you, once each, about that requirement. We do not sell, rent or publish your details and we do not add anyone to a marketing list. It costs you nothing and commits you to nothing.
Can we use the templates and tables without sending an enquiry?
Yes. Every table, criterion and template on this site is free to read and use, and nothing on the site is behind a form. The enquiry route exists because some readers want suppliers to reply to them, not because anything is withheld from the ones who do not.
Sources cited on this page
- Civil Aviation (ATOL) Regulations 2012, reg 9 — the prohibition
- Civil Aviation (ATOL) Regulations 2012, reg 10 — the exemptions
- Package Travel and Linked Travel Arrangements Regulations 2018, reg 3
- GOV.UK — Rates and allowances for Air Passenger Duty
- Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, s.2
- ONS — Travel trends: 2024
Every figure above was read from the source it is attributed to on 20 September 2026. How we check this.
Send your requirement
Five questions you answer by clicking. Company and contact details are the last step, never the first.
Your requirement is ready to send
Here is what happens after you submit:
- Your answers go to travel management companies advertising on this site.
- No more than three of them may contact you, once each, about this requirement.
- You decide who, if anyone, you speak to. You are committed to nothing.
We are not a travel management company and we do not book travel.