TUI director defends decision not to carry out Tunisia hotel safety audit
TUI was heavily questioned over its decision not to carry out regular security audits of its Tunisia hotels at the fourth day of hearing into the deaths of 30 British holidaymakers in a beach gun attack in June 2015.
The company’ director of risk and compliance, Jacque Reynolds, told the inquest at the Royal Courts of Justice in London yesterday that TUI relied on the advice of ABTA and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and on information from hotels and local authorities, and had not felt it necessary to carry out a specific audit.
She said audits had only been carried out on hotels in Sharm el Sheikh following terror attacks in Egypt.
In a statement, Ian Chapman, TUI regional director for West Mediterranean, said he had received an email from security consultancy firm Covenant, which carried out the work for TUI in Egypt, after the Bardo Museum attack requesting a meeting over its concerns about Tunisia.
He forwarded it to Reynolds, who told the inquest she had forwarded the correspondence to ABTA and had taken no further action, adding that she receives emails of this nature about once a month.
She said TUI was having regular conference calls with ABTA and had been told that the Foreign Office was not going to change its advice.
It was only after the beach attack in Sousse that TUI instructed Covenant to do an audit in Tunisia, which discovered security was inadequate at other TUI hotels.
Reynolds said the checks had excluded the five-star Riu Imperial Marhaba hotel where the attacks took place because it was still a crime scene.
Andrew Ritchie QC, counsel for the families of the victims, put it to Reynolds that lives could have been saved if TUI had acted following the attacks on the Bardo Museum and after receiving the warnings from Covenant.
"You see, the families’ concern here is that if those sort of systems had been recommended to you in early April, an audit carried out by Lee Doddridge (of Covenant) after Bardo, you had 11 weeks to tidy up the Imperial Marhaba Hotel and save lives. I am not saying you personally, but your organisation. And you might have saved quite a few lives by having those things in place," he said.
Reynolds replied: "I think that’s an opinion, yes. I think the points that are raised in this document are very clear, common sense points with regards to security, and viz the Marhaba Hotel wasn’t included as part of this review, but I’m sure the sentiment around what is appropriate security applies to any hotel."
Ritchie also said to Reynolds: "I put it to you that TUI should have audited security on paper or by sending an expert adviser when the FCO advised there was a high risk of terror activity after Bardo. Would you agree with that?"
But she said she did not agree and insisted: "We were told on numerous occasions that the advice wouldn’t be changing."
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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