I'd love to, and thank you for raising the question.
I'm going to distinguish between an airline and a travel agent. There are government agencies involved in the tour operator business. In the case of the tour operators, TICO, if you're familiar with it--and there's a fund in Quebec as well--protects the travellers. They will require the tour operators to place on deposit funds for future trips. If you buy a trip to Cancun in June, for example, and it's a thousand dollars, and let's say you buy it from a major tour operator, that tour operator will have to place the money in a trust fund. However, if that tour operator were to fail, and let's say you were the merchant processor, you would dispute the transaction with your card issuer. We, as the merchant processor, would end up absorbing that charge if the tour operator was out of business. So we require, in the case of the more challenged tour operators, deposits as well.
So the tour operators are being doubly penalized, because the funds are holding money and ultimately, if it's charged on a credit card, the merchant processors get charged. That's a real problem for the industry. If there's anything anyone can do to help that particular industry out, they really need the help. I think Conquest was, in part, a victim of that particular situation.
In the case of the airlines, there is no such regime. We process for both. In the case of the airlines, we have a great big credit department that would look at the risk. If you own an airline and your airline is profitable and has plenty of cash and so on, we may not require a deposit. If you are more challenged or are going through some tougher times, we may require a deposit to protect against the risks I alluded to earlier.