Gap year operator collapses: how to protect your money

By Jamie Hartwell · Updated 14 July 2026

If a gap year or volunteer placement company takes your money and then folds, whether you get it back depends almost entirely on how you paid and whether a flight was part of the deal. That is the hard lesson from the collapse of GVI, a volunteer travel operator that stopped trading on 1 July 2026 and left students out of pocket, some by more than £10,000. Most of them will not be first in the refund queue. This guide walks through the protection that actually applies to placement bookings, the big gap that catches gap-year travellers out, and the five things worth doing before you pay a penny.

What happened with GVI, and why it matters to you

GVI sold volunteer and internship placements on wildlife and conservation projects abroad, the kind of trip a lot of 18 to 25-year-olds save for over a year. When it went into liquidation, participants were told to lodge a claim with the liquidator and wait. The problem is that customers sit near the back of the creditor queue, behind staff and secured lenders, so a full refund from the company itself is unlikely.

Here is the part that surprises people. A placement fee is often not a "package holiday" in the legal sense, and it usually does not include a flight booked through the same company. That knocks out the two protections travellers assume they have. So the question stops being "which scheme covers me" and becomes "did I pay in a way that gives me my own route to a refund." Usually, that route is your card.

ATOL and ABTA: useful, but probably not here

ATOL is the scheme most people have heard of. It is run by the UK Civil Aviation Authority, and it protects flight-inclusive package holidays: when you book a flight plus accommodation or another service for one price through one company, you get an ATOL Certificate listing what is covered. If that company fails, you get your money back or, if you are already away, you finish the trip and fly home at no extra cost.

The catch for gap-year bookings is right there in the name. No flight in the package, no ATOL. A lot of volunteer placements sell you the project, the lodging and the in-country support, and leave you to book your own flights separately. That arrangement falls outside ATOL entirely.

ABTA is the other name you will see. It covers many non-flight packages, such as coach, rail or cruise trips, when the company that fails is an ABTA member. Worth checking, but again it only helps if what you bought is a genuine package and the operator is actually a member. Do not assume a logo on a website means live membership. Look the company up directly on the CAA and ABTA registers before you rely on either.

Section 75: the one that most often works, if you have it

This is the protection worth understanding properly, because it is the strongest one and it does not care whether your trip was a package. Under Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act 1974, if you pay for something on a credit card and it costs more than £100 and no more than £30,000, the card provider is jointly liable with the seller. Put plainly: if the company does not deliver and will not refund you, you can claim the money back from your credit card company instead.

Section 75 has real teeth. It covers the full cost of the booking even if you only put part of it on the card, so a credit-card deposit can protect the entire amount, not just the bit you paid on the card. You do not need a package, an ATOL Certificate or an ABTA member. You need a credit card and a direct payment to the company that owes you.

Now the honest catch, and it is a big one for students. Most students do not own a credit card, and Section 75 does not apply to debit cards at all. It also breaks if there is a middleman: if you paid an agent or a third-party platform rather than the operator itself, the direct link Section 75 relies on can fall away. That is a large part of why some GVI customers were told their payments were not protected by the usual card-refund rules. When I checked GVI's situation against the CAA's ATOL scheme and the Financial Ombudsman's guidance on Section 75, the pattern was clear: no flight in the package and no credit-card link leaves very little to fall back on.

Chargeback: the debit-card backstop

If you paid by debit card, or the purchase was too small for Section 75, chargeback might help instead. It is not a law, it is a voluntary scheme that Visa, Mastercard and American Express run, and it lets you ask your bank to reverse a payment when you paid for something you did not receive. Debit and credit cards both qualify.

The thing to know is the clock. You usually get around 120 days to raise a chargeback, counted from when you should have received what you paid for. Miss the window and the door closes, so if a company you have paid goes quiet or collapses, contact your bank quickly rather than waiting to see how the liquidation plays out. Chargeback is not guaranteed, but it costs nothing to try and it has rescued plenty of stranded deposits.

Travel insurance: only if you bought the right cover

A standard travel policy will not usually refund you when a company goes bust. The specific thing to look for is end supplier failure cover, sometimes sold as financial failure or scheduled airline failure insurance. Some policies include it, many do not, and cheap single-trip policies often skip it. If you are booking a long placement or an expensive trip, read that section of the policy wording before you buy, not after something goes wrong. Our student travel insurance guide covers what to check.

Before you pay: five things that actually protect you

You cannot control whether a company survives. You can control how exposed you are if it does not. Here is what makes the difference.

1. Put at least part of it on a credit card. Even a small deposit on a credit card can pull the whole booking under Section 75. If you do not have one and a parent does, paying on theirs, then repaying them, is worth a conversation. Never pay by bank transfer for a big booking if you can avoid it, because a transfer has no card protection at all.
2. Check the registers, not the website. Look the company up on the CAA's ATOL register and, for non-flight packages, on ABTA's membership list. A badge in a footer is not proof of live cover.
3. Get it in writing whether it is a package. Ask the company directly whether your booking is a "package" with financial protection under the Package Travel Regulations, and keep the answer. If they dodge the question, treat that as your answer.
4. Do not pay everything up front months ahead. The longer your money sits with a company before the trip, the more exposed you are, and the more likely a chargeback window will have closed by the time trouble shows. Spread payment where you can.
5. Keep every confirmation and receipt. A Section 75 or chargeback claim moves faster when you can show what you paid, when, to whom, and what you were promised. Save the emails.

If you have already lost money

Work through the routes in order. Lodge your claim with the liquidator so you are on record, even though recovery there is slim. Then go straight to your card provider: try Section 75 if you paid any of it on a credit card, and chargeback if you paid by debit card, and put both in even if you are unsure they apply, because the card company decides, not you. Check any travel insurance for end supplier failure cover. The card company decides your claim, and if it turns you down and you think that is wrong, the Financial Ombudsman Service can review a card provider's decision for free.

None of this makes a collapse painless. But the students who come out of one with their money back are almost always the ones who paid on a credit card and moved quickly, not the ones who waited for the company to sort it out. If a trip abroad has knocked a hole in your budget, our holiday budgeting guide and our wider student money-safety coverage are decent next reads.

Reviewed 13 Jul 2026 · Editorial standards

Written by

Jamie Hartwell

Jamie writes UniSorted's money coverage: student loans, budgeting, bank accounts, insurance, the lot. He spent most of first year living in his overdraft, so the budgeting guides all have a bit on what to do after you have already overspent, not just before. Based in Leeds. Reach him at jamie@unisorted.co.uk.