Hurricane action highlights inequalities – TravelMole Comment by Jeremy Skidmore

In the wake of Hurricane Wilma, which ripped through parts of Mexico and killed around 40 people, tour operators have again excelled themselves, pulling out all the stops to ensure holidaymakers can return home safely.

It would be tempting to say they have emerged as heroes, but unfortunately they haven’t. Few people have noticed their efforts, except for those who have been helped.

Some 8,500 Brits were on packages in Cancun when the storm struck (most of them had booked with Thomson and MyTravel). The Federation of Tour Operators estimates that its members spent £2 million in flight costs alone, sending charters out to repatriate customers. On top of that, people were refunded for the parts of their holiday that they were not able to take and those due to travel given alternative packages.

These Herculean efforts went largely unnoticed by the wider public because companies do not look good by gloating about their own efforts while others are dying.

Meanwhile the Government, which rejected a levy because it wanted to give people the choice of whether to insure their holidays or not, sent out a charter to get independent travellers out of the stricken resort.

I know a levy fund would only have been used in the event of a company failure, but it’s clear that this Government only wants choice if it doesn’t reflect badly on them and the site of stranded Brits at the mercy of the full force of nature is a very bad image indeed. Besides, the Foreign Office knows it is not going to get criticised for helping people out in an emergency.

No wonder the FTO’s Andy Cooper is tearing his hair out at the unfairness of it all.

He’s not so callous as to suggest that independent travellers should have been left to the mercy of the elements, but he’s right to demand a more consistent attitude to overseas travel from this Government.

In an age when hurricanes and other natural disasters are becoming almost commonplace, it is wrong that tour operators pay through the nose for bonding to protect customers in the event of failure and fork out millions to help holidaymakers during a crisis, while other suppliers are simply bailed out by the Government.

On a lighter note, I had to chuckle at the decision by Airtours to redesign its logo.

After a painful restructuring, parent company MyTravel is back on the right track, but it’s only two years since it made an annual loss of nearly £1 billion and a year since it lost around £190 million.

Now we hear Airtours has spent 18 months listening to travel agents and clients and has finally come up with a new logo that is ‘fresh and modern’.

Journalists have a name for this kind of marketing speak, but it is not usable on a website that is often read before 9pm in the evening.

The logo change begs the question “why bother?” It’s not as if the company hasn’t got bigger issues to deal with. There’s nothing wrong with the new look, but there was nothing wrong with the old one either. To be honest, I’m struggling to tell the difference between the two.

I only hope that they didn’t spend much of my money on it (I have a very minor shareholding to ensure I receive the company’s reports) as it could easily have been designed by me, or by a primary school child with an average aptitude for art. I very much doubt it will influence holiday buying decisions.