61–70 of 285 posts
And the scale. Operation Market Garden only dropped 40,000 troops. D day only managed to land 150,000 on the first day.
Reminder again to never hold gift cards. I had a family member who was gited a $3,000 travel voucher with an agency - I told them to exchange it in for flights asap as you can book up to a year out, change the tickets later and it's better to be a creditor with a national airline than a likely-going-out-of-business-because-of-online travel agency
The gift card market just confuses me. Especially when it's people giving gifts to people (not corporate gifts), cash is something that has at least as much value as the gift card, is accept everywhere, isn't a liability on a balance sheet, and is easier to give.
Money is the other extreme, it says "I really have no idea what kind of gift you'd like", so apparently you hardly know each other.
Gift cards are at least a small step up, you show you think the other likes to travel.
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not completely...booking.com, tripadvisor, trivago, expedia and all these online hotel booking sites are what really did this company in. i suppose it didn't help that folks were probably less interested in travelling due to financial uncertainties around brexit but it definitely isn't the main reason
That’s a very good point. Travelers have shifted over the years from an all-inclusive package booking process to a DIY piecemeal approach and it’s hard for package sellers to compete against the OTAs.
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The Guardian article mentions that hotels have to wait up to 3 months to be paid by the holiday company. I can see why the Tunisian hotel did what they did, but you are correct that their business relationship is with Thomas Cook, not the holidaymakers. Meanwhile, Thomas Cook holidaymakers were anxious that they might be evicted from their hotels or charged again for their holidays. Holiday companies do not normally…
British travel agents that belong to ABTA, the national association, should have emergencies like this covered by insurance, so the money is there. This is basically the nightmare scenario for a travel agent so you would think ABTA has an emergency process all set up and ready to go.
I was recently debating booking a flight to Europe on Norwegian. It didn't affect my decision, but I'm very aware that they're struggling financially, so I'd only buy the tickets less than a month out on a credit card so it's the bank's money, and if they declared bankruptcy and cancelled flights, c'est la vie.
BTW Norwegian are fine for a while
https://simpleflying.com/norwegian-bond-payments-deferrednor...
Does this mean Condor Airlines is shutting down as well? Their website[1] says they're continuing to fly, but I'm wondering if there any sort of precedent for what happens to child companies when the parent becomes insolvent. Having just returned just last week from Europe via Condor Airlines, I'm glad I don't have to worry about this mess. [1]: https://www.condor.com/us
Basically Condor answered that they will continue operating but also had to apply for a state backed credit to bridge short term liquidity issues caused by Cook's insolvency. This is being assessed by the German government at the moment.
The german travel agent subsidiaries however have stopped selling travels for now (brands Neckermann Reisen, Bucher Last Minute,etc)
https://spiegel.de/wirtschaft/unternehmen/thomas-cook-reisek...
One interesting part of the news coverage is that there are 600k customers involved, and only 150k of them are UK holidaymakers. Notice the lack of coverage of the other 450k?
The guardian is a British newspaper, so there's an understandable focus. An additional factor may be the insurance situation: Some countries require travel organizers to set up insurance for these cases, ensuring that customers can still get back. I'm not 100% sure on this, but I think the UK doesn't have such requirements, which would worsen the situation for them in particular.
Does this mean Condor Airlines is shutting down as well? Their website[1] says they're continuing to fly, but I'm wondering if there any sort of precedent for what happens to child companies when the parent becomes insolvent. Having just returned just last week from Europe via Condor Airlines, I'm glad I don't have to worry about this mess. [1]: https://www.condor.com/us
If Condor operates as an independent company, as long as it is a going concern, it will likely continue to fly. As an asset, it will be sold by any administrator in order to help recoup money to pay Thomas Cook's creditors. It is (most likely) worth more money as an operating airline than if it were to be shut down.
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Why does only cover "package holidays" and not all round-trip air tickets? That distinction doesn't make sense except as a subsidy of package deal providers...
It’s not a subsidy; the companies which sell package holidays need to put the cash up. It was done because of financially unstable package holiday companies setting up and then failing leaving people stranded. Most people in the UK know to buy an ‘ATOL Protected’ holiday if they go for a package deal.
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I'm sure you read the article, which mentions that there were negotiations up to the last minute to raise the last 200mm pounds on top of the 900mm pounds existing rescue package.
Exactly, they should have stopped flying people out when they were within two weeks of closing. If they had secured the funding needed to continue then all well and good and then start flying people out again.