Travel company Thomas Cook bankrupt
It has been in the air for a while, but Thomas Cook, the oldest travel company in the world, has collapsed. The English travel company was struggling with a debt of 2 billion euros. Thomas Cook Group Plc. has 21.000 employees and provided annual holidays for 22 million customers.
The carpenter Thomas Cook from Derbyshire (Central England), born in 1808, would never have imagined in his wildest dreams that since 1845 under his name, a gigantic travel company with tour operators, travel agencies, hotels and airplanes has been active in the travel industry. Thomas Cook had a turnover of around ten billion euros in Europe. The company had its own fleet of 117 aircraft.
In the Netherlands, 200 people work for Thomas Cook and approximately 400.000 customers go on holiday with Thomas Cook/Neckermann Reizen every year. In Belgium, the group is active as a tour operator under the names Thomas Cook, Neckermann and Pegase. The company also has its own travel agency chain (Thomas Cook Travel Shop) and had an airline (Thomas Cook Airlines Belgium) until 2017.
Since Thomas Cook's merger with the struggling Mytravel in 2007, the company's business has taken a bit of a turn for the worse. The fierce price competition on the Internet did not make it any easier either. Due to the high debts, there was no money left to invest.
A recent rescue plan failed because the British government did not want to invest money in the ailing company.
Experts expect a domino effect and more travel companies to go bankrupt. In Germany, media are questioning Condor's chances of survival. The German holiday flyer is part of the Thomas Cook Group.
Sources: Various media
And so the digital on the Internet to be able to book everything and buy many companies where thousands of people work.
Just look at the USA as an example, where many large shopping malls had to close their doors because we usually have to buy products produced in China from ALI and Amazon, etc.
What's wrong with visiting a travel agency where you can get expert advice like we used to do. Or simply buy from a store or business where the business can often also repair what has been purchased.
Maybe I'm still a bit old fashioned.
Is online or Valhalla.
Oh yes there will be reactions again, many jobs will come back, but what kind of jobs.
Regularly read about the HR policy at Amazon and ALI.
Jan Beute.
Dear Jan,
You should not romanticize all the jobs that will be lost…………..long working days, low salary, working on commission, difficult customers…….
Thomas Cook's pilots will probably find other work.
In Belgium, Brussels Airlines transports nearly 1.000.000 Thomas Cook customers every year. This loss even endangers the survival of Brussels Airport. An airport without its own fleet or with a fleet but far too few travelers is not viable. There are already mass redundancies due to this bankruptcy, namely 600 at the travel agencies and several hundred at the airport!
It is incomprehensible that Thomas Cook's management has allowed it to come this far. It had been known for years that things were getting worse.
My first trip to Thailand was a short beach holiday in Cha am, booked through a travel agency. Picked up by a driver with a guide and brought back to Suvarnabhumi 8 days later. When I got back home I had nothing to say: only the beach and 1 trip to Hua Hin. I booked my second trip to Thailand at home via the internet. The flight to Bangkok and my flight via Air Asia as well as my hotel in Krabi for 2 days. I rented a 150 cc scooter on site and looked at everything I had found on the internet beforehand (travel stories, etc.). I did 2 boat trips, snorkeled, visited a mangrove forest, went on a jungle tour, visited temples and Buddhas… and changed locations and hotels every 2-3 days. I booked those hotels on a PC of the hotel where I was staying!. I'm talking about almost 15 years ago. Today, everyone under the age of 45 plans their trip this way. You no longer need a travel agency. Thomas Cook is a specialist in mass tourism, mainly beach holidays of up to 2 weeks. This audience almost no longer exists. Thomas Cook missed these new developments and that was its downfall. They thought that a formula that had worked for 140 years would continue to work forever.
Dear Luc, you write that the public hardly exists anymore. Nowadays it has actually become dull, with 10.000 of them traveling all-in to such a “camp” in Turkey, I think there is a lot of that audience among them. Grt Erwin
I'm not saying that the public no longer exists, but that this generation is dying out. Consequence: this model is not profitable!
It also depends on what you book when you go to a travel agency.
If you book a beach holiday with a trip to Hua Hin, you shouldn't expect to take them on a trip throughout Thailand all week.
At that time I worked an average of 90 hours a week and needed some rest. So it became a short exotic beach holiday in Thailand. But to be honest: such a beautiful country has much more to offer and I still experience that every time!
So can you wait for the big boss to receive 30 million if the company goes bankrupt ……
Talk about pickpockets!
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/thomas-cook-bosses-who-received-20148924