VICTORIA, British
Columbia -- Travel agency regulation in British Columbia, Canada,
recently came under the umbrella of a new agency, the Business
Practices and Consumer Protection Agency (BPCPA). The old Travel
Agents Act was repealed.
However, the new
organization, which is responsible for consumer protection in
several industries, adopted features of the previous law, such as
the Travel Assurance Fund, and adopted the accompanying regulations
with a few amendments, as follows:
The law had
said client money was deemed to be held in trust, but new
regulations spell out specific requirements for establishing trust
accounts.
Nonresidents of
British Columbia now can claim on the Travel Assurance Fund if they
purchase travel through a registered agency in the province; claim
limits were set at $5,000 per person.
Rules about
office operations were tweaked to no longer require that an agency
be open during normal business hours.
Meanwhile,
operating home-based agencies still is prohibited. As its next
step, the BPCPA said it is assembling advisory groups from each of
the industries for which it is responsible.
To contact
the reporter who wrote this article, send e-mail to Nadine Godwin
at [email protected].