Apart from being a well run, financially resilient company which has been trading since 1999, all of our trips include total financial protection for you.
There are are two types of holidays and two types of protection. If your holiday includes a flight, any flight, it is protected by our ATOL. If it does not, you are protected by our bonded membership of ABTOT.
ATOL stands for the Air Travel Organisers’ Licensing scheme. ATOL provides financial security when you book a package holiday with a UK travel company. If your travel company stops trading, we’ll support you if you’re abroad. If you’re due to travel, we’ll refund your money.
If you book a package holiday that is not ATOL protected, you risk losing your money.
When you book with us, you will receive a certificate showing the money you have paid and the services we have agreed to provide, it is this which you would present to ATOL in the unlikely event of our failure. It's even got the phone numbers on there. And you won't lose the certificate because it's a revolting yellow colour. Plus, we provide it in digital format within your online customer area.
Because ATOL is administered by the UK government's Civil Aviation Authority, they lose interest when it comes to trips which don't include flights. For this reason, all non-flight trips are protected by our ABTOT license 5331. You can verify our ABTOT membership here.
It works in much the same way as our ATOL protection as explained above, just without the yellow paperwork.
Rated & Trusted to do a great job
Here are three ways our holidays are trusted, recommended and rated by people more important than ourselves, along with a little preview of all there is to look forward to on a brilliantly local and proudly responsible holiday with Pura Aventura.
Then in July 2021, in a detailed consumer survey and review of the industry, Which? Magazine once again highlighted us as a leading choice for flexible, fair and sustainable travel:
"Promising responsible travel away from the crowds, Pura Aventura puts both the planet and its customers first."
As verdicts go, we couldn't really have asked for anything better than that. Sound a little worthy you might say, but as one of the UK's first travel companies to certify as B Corp, it's exactly what we have made a legally binding commitment to do. Plus, as the UK's leading consumer champion body, Which? know a thing or two about what customer service should look like, so we take it as an enormous pat on the back!
But if that's not enough, our Feefo reviews received throughout this period will also testify to our fair and transparent approach.
2. Recommended by leading publications for sustainable travel
Our commitment to sustainable travel has recently been described by The Independent as "one of the travel industry’s most ambitious carbon mitigation plans". We were also proud as punch to see Wanderlust Magazine recommended us as Best For Sustainability for Costa Rica holidays, and humbled when Condé Nast Traveller magazine recently highlighted us as one of the nine best travel companies for the eco-concious traveller.
Our action on carbon is decisive and urgent. For each and every Pura Aventura holiday we compensate all carbon produced by air, road and sea by 160% - a mile for every kilometre travelled. That's everything from your front door and back again, invested in a brilliant and long-term rural community development project in Nicaragua. Trees go into the ground, local partnerships go into keeping them there, and money goes into very hard working pockets.
3. Rated as 5* by our clients for brilliant service and holidays
Your Pura holiday is 5 star rated, for both our service and the holiday itself.
Feefo’s platinum rating requires three consecutive years of gold awards, we have 12, and counting. Their gold standard requires a score of 92% over the course of a year, we average over 98%. We have received our 2023 platinum award, meaning our 5 star customer service standards have been maintained through the covid pandemic.
We also take the time to understand what our customers love about our service. The graphic below shows the words commonly used to describe our service in our Feefo reviews. The bigger the word, the more often it's used. Exceptional holidays: beautifully local, beautifully responsible
Of course, it only matters how trustworthy and sustainable we are considered if we create truly exceptional and original holidays that you want to come and take. Happily, we've always been pretty good at that.
