Neilson/Thomas cook

andyoneil wrote:I do belive that Crystal is part of that group too - think Its only Inghams of the "high street TO" thats any different

Big problem may be that a lot of smaller TOs use Thomas Cook/First Choice charters

If you're not booked with Squeezyjet/jet2 etc than now may be the time

Crystal, Ski Alpine, Off the Piste, Hayes & Jarvis and Thomsons are part of Tui, Germany.

I have £6k of travel booked thro Thomas Cook. I checked them out before parting with the gelt.

I find this news about Thomas Cook very worrying, not for me personally, but for the ski industry and particularly anyone connected with Thomas Cook.

I hope they weather this storm and everyone gets their holidays okay.

It's not always easy to know who you're actually booked with. Like, for example, I booked our accommodation through Igluski. The owner of the accommodation is Pierre et Vacances, but Igluski booked it through Ski Horizon who, they assure me, are an independant tour operator. However, we booked our train tickets directly with Eurostar.

Even if Thomas Cook went bust and all the customers of Thomas Cook got their money back, that's not really the point, as the customers want their holidays and the providers of the holiday accommodation etc. all want their money.

If the worst comes to the worst, who is big enough and has enough money to take over Thomas Cook?

Ally

:shock:

Hmm, Mr Admin..

How about a J2SKI holiday company. )

Dave Mac wrote:

andyoneil wrote:I do belive that Crystal is part of that group too - think Its only Inghams of the "high street TO" thats any different

Big problem may be that a lot of smaller TOs use Thomas Cook/First Choice charters

If you're not booked with Squeezyjet/jet2 etc than now may be the time

Crystal, Ski Alpine, Off the Piste, Hayes & Jarvis and Thomsons are part of Tui, Germany.

I have £6k of travel booked thro Thomas Cook. I checked them out before parting with the gelt.

Is there an echo in here?

When you say "I checked them out...." what do you mean? Did you ask for their last set of accounts?



Personally, I would not book through Thomas Cook now I know what their situation is like. I have never only once taken a ski holiday with Neilson flying with Thomas Cook Airlines.

Interestingly, T Cook Airlines have an old fleet, with only a small number of new planes on order, which are A321 Airbuses to replace the ageing Boeing 757's (lovely old plane, but if anyone has flown on a T Cook 757 they won't be sorry to see them go....), and no investment has been made into their fleet for a long time prior to this.
I do believe they inherited the MyTravel fleet when the groups merged, not sure what happened to them, but I would have thought the same as what happened with the FCA fleet when they merged with Thomsonfly to create Thomson Airways. You still see a few old FCA livery planes, but I haven't see a MyTravel plane for a couple of years now.

Far Queue wrote:How about a J2SKI holiday company. )

Sounds like a plan... I think I should mention the Billion Pound Debt to my bank first though, before offering £3.50 for TC.

AllyG wrote:

If the worst comes to the worst, who is big enough and has enough money to take over Thomas Cook?

Ally

Thomas Cook is made up of lots of sub companies, including operations in Germany, Russia and France. Its the Russian and French operations which have suffered as a result of the african revolutions with many holidays in Tunisia and Egypt not being taken.

Thomas Cook also recently bought Co-Operative Travel which was struggling I believe, this may well have been another nail in their financial coffin, following on from the MyTravel Group merger.

You may be interested that back in the 80's Robert Maxwell purchased a stake in the company........hmmmmm.

TravelEx is part of the group, and would likely be the main asset to sell I would have thought, so I expect a large financial organisation to make a bid for them at some stage.

With regards to the travel businesses, the airline is a separate entity. They have the high street stores which I would imagine will probably go in the long term. Other travel companies such as Thomson in the UK might be interested in buying a stake in the business, or they may just sit back and expect to pick up new trade as a result of lack of confidence in the business or future failings.

ATOL protect package holidays, so responsibility for any payments would fall with them, not quite sure how that might also impact negatively on the nations economy though.

I believe they don't own property such as hotels or chalets, I might be wrong, which would either mean other tour ops coming in to take over, or sadly some of those hotels particularly exclusive to T Cook may well be forced to close.

None of this is good news for either the UK or Europes economy, or the worlds in general. I believe this is indicative of the times we are currently in, and that we are witnessing the beginning of a massive financial meltdown in the western capitalist world.

Anyone going to University now should be speaking Chinese, Indian or Portuguese with a Brazilian slant.

There's already far too little competition in the holiday market. I don't think Thomson/Tui would be permitted to buy them.
I guess any potential buyers are going to wait and see if they go under, get the debt largely written off by the administrators then step in and pick up the pieces.
Bottom line though is if the banks don't bail them out and they go bust, they banks are going to take a big hit. So it's probably in their interests to help.

Note that Thos Cook are not loss making, they made £124m Operating Profit in year 2010. This was on a turnover of £3.14bn. An operating profit of 3.4%, might be deemed OK, in the current trading climate. But it is not sufficient to pay the interest on their loans.

It looks like some big strategic mistakes have been made. I could never see the sense in them buying a commodity business like Co-op Travel. They would have been better targetting the Co-ops weaker activities.

Having dome so, they have been inactive on the cost-cutting that should take place after such an event. There are many places where two Thos Cook outlets co-exist in close proximity ~ our nearest town has two TCs, about 150 yards apart.

They do have significant assets, and could raise enough to reduce their debt by a quarter ~ they just haven't done so. Well the banks will make them do so. I don't think that they have yet replaced their recently departed CEO, so that may prove to be an opportunity.

At a time when the internet has taken a lot of business away from the High St, shop closures and job losses are inevitable. By not taking expedient action, a CEO, and the board, risks the whole operation.

I don't take the view that they are necessarily doomed, there are actions that can be taken to reduce costs.

To anawer the quetions, I wouldn't have a problem with booking with TC ~ as I said already, I have booked £6k in flights ~ a decision taken in full awareness of their seocnd profits warning of the year, No, I did not check them out, but I did check that their ATOL number was in date. I am not concerned about what planes TC own as I am flying Emirates.

That decision was reinforced today by ABTA, who say that all package holidays and flights are fully protected.

Alles ist ruhig.