Head Tale

As someone who loves visiting all-inclusive resorts (and frequently meets overseas guests while there including many who probably traveled with Thomas Cook), I’ve been watching the collapse of the 178 year old travel agency with with great interest.

Some thoughts:

* Some are calling this the first “Brexit Bankruptcy“, a result of uncertainty caused by all the back and forth confusion around Brexit – if and when it will happen and what the terms will be.

* There are other reasons for the collapse including the impact of the Internet on travel booking, a failed merger *with* an Internet travel company, a huge debt load, the refusal of the government to bail out a company in trouble and possibly even changing weather patterns which may make people less likely to travel if destinations are hotter than in the past.

* It’s crazy that not just tens but hundreds of thousands of people are affected including many who are currently *in* resorts that haven’t yet been paid so there’s the crazy situation where people who are at a resort are being asked to pay *again* for a trip they already bought since apparently travel companies don’t release funds until *after* the package vacation is over and obviously Thomas Cook isn’t in a position to do that.

* Fortunately, the UK has some sort of national insurance scheme for international holidays that I don’t think we have here (I’ve read different things about whether it applies to all international travel or just package holidays.)

* Thomas Cook hasn’t operated in Canada for thirteen years so it’s unlikely that very many Canadians were affected, at least directly.

* Will be interesting to see how this affects resorts in the coming months – both in terms of prices (will they go up because of less people booking or down to attract more customers from North America?) and inventory, especially at destinations popular with British/European travelers.

* And obviously this is a tragedy for all of Thomas Cook’s workforce who ended up without jobs extremely abruptly.