Kiss failure reaction: ‘another kick for the industry’
Monday, 18 Aug, 2010
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In the wake of the Kiss Flights collapse, Holidays Please director Charles Duncombe is warning consumers to be suspicious of cheap prices and to Google travel companies to discover any financial problems.
He also advises customers to favour companies that include long-haul product as they are likely to have greater stability.
In a blog on the homeworking company’s website entitled ‘How many more holiday companies will go bust? The answer….. quite a lot probably!’ Duncombe warns customers to look for ATOL protection, book with credit cards and take out high level insurance.
He adds: “Search for any signs of financial problems with the company that you are looking to book with. Search on Google for terms such as the ‘[name of holiday company] redundancies’ and ‘[name of holiday company] financial loss’
“Look for holiday companies that sell what the industry calls “long-haul” holidays… These companies are likely to have much smoother sales throughout the year rather than the feast and famine that can kill short-haul travel companies.”
The company, part of Hays Independence Group, had just five bookings with Kiss Flights. Duncombe told TravelMole he expected more short-haul specialists to fail:
“It would be unfair for me to generalise and say that short-haul companies are trading on the edge but the business model means the margins are a lot less, and it’s generally more competitive.
"Add to that the seasonal nature and you get the feast or famine. My guess is that over the coming months we’re going to see more short-haul operators going bust.”
Advantage Travel Centres had a ‘couple of hundred’ customers booked with Kiss.
Leisure director Julia Lo Bue-Said said: “I think its another kick for the industry. Everyone of these failures has another impact and dents customer confidence.
“A lot of the customers that have booked Goldtrail flights have been put on Kiss flights, they’ve having to go through the pain of rebookings, cancellations and refunds again.”
But she added, had the collapse happened two or three weeks earlier the number of passengers affected would have been much higher.
A spokesperson for ABTA said: “Clearly failures in the height of the summer are very unwelcome and this is providing ABTA and the CAA with an opportunity to emphasise to holidaymakers the importance of financial protection.”
by Debbie Ward
Bev
Editor in chief Bev Fearis has been a travel journalist for 25 years. She started her career at Travel Weekly, where she became deputy news editor, before joining Business Traveller as deputy editor and launching the magazine’s website. She has also written travel features, news and expert comment for the Guardian, Observer, Times, Telegraph, Boundless and other consumer titles and was named one of the top 50 UK travel journalists by the Press Gazette.
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