Following the immediate closing of operations for the Thomas Cook Group, including Thomas Cook Airlines, a local travel booking agent has agreed to fulfil all current bookings arranged with the now liquidated British travel and leisure group.
Image by Rob Hodgkins, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0
Based in Westville, KwaZulu-Natal, Thompsons Africa has been the inbound agent for the Thomas Cook Group for over 20 years, and has committed to honouring all bookings for guests who are currently travelling in the country, Tourism Update reported.
Following the company’s collapse, Thomas Cook Airlines announced that the British government and Civil Aviation Authority would be offering repatriation flights for passengers due to fly back to the UK since Monday 23 September, when the news broke, until Friday 6 October.
The cancelled flights outbound from the UK, however, are not included in the repatriation efforts.
Following the ‘stranding’ of 600,000 would-be passengers on Monday morning (of which 150,000 were British), tour operators and travel packages booked through Thomas Cook and its leisure agencies have also been affected by the company’s collapse.
‘We are currently working together with all service providers to ensure that no guest is left stranded in the country,’ says David Standage, the Financial Director tourism group Cullinan Holdings which owns Thompsons Africa.
‘Thomas Cook was a global leader in travel and tourism, and through its various brands, has been a great supporter of tourism into South Africa. Its demise is a great loss to the country,’ Standage added.
