Goldtrail Holidays in Administration

[renort]

Tartin Ton...

No, what we need is for firms to stop selling holidays below cost and for people to realise that there is a market price for holidays below which it's not feasible for companies to make any money.

Everyone quoting on here about how cheap their holiday was, I have one question. Whould you have paid £100 per person more for the same holiday with the same operator?

An idealistic viewpoint, that somehow doesnt sit well with the fact that your current employer also cannot get its sums right in that regard, but is fortunate that its losses can be accommodated by your shareholders personal wealth.

Would you refuse to pay the discounted price for a TV, and instead stump up an extra £100 to ensure some poor guy in Korea doesnt lose his job?

[VOM1T]

why now ?

Further to my earlier post, an accountant friend has just pointed out to me that if a company has an overdraft, then the best time to pull the plug is when cash flow is at its highest, thereby reducing borrowings to a minimum and effectively using the most number of payments for future holidays to offset previous losses and debts to banks.. seems immoral .. but I'm a driver not a numbers jockey.. any thoughts from more qualified ppruners ?

[Spotter LBA]

A Turkuaz aircraft was blocked in shortly after landing at LBA this morning by the airport fire engines due to non payment to the airport. Payment must have been made as aircraft has since departed back to Bodrum. Is this signs of what is to come of another airline?? I hope not.

[WHBM]

Originally Posted by VOM1T

Further to my earlier post, an accountant friend has just pointed out to me that if a company has an overdraft, then the best time to pull the plug is when cash flow is at its highest, thereby reducing borrowings to a minimum and effectively using the most number of payments for future holidays to offset previous losses and debts to banks.. seems immoral .. but I'm a driver not a numbers jockey.. any thoughts from more qualified ppruners ?

This is correct. From the point of view of the person chasing their money which is overdue and likely to disappear for ever it is the sensible thing to do.

UK car dealers used to be prone to this, in the days when there was one registration change per year on August 1, and a peak of deposits put down with dealers in the months/weeks leading up to the change date, it was common for the banks, or the Inland Revenue, whoever was overdue their money, to go for winding-up proceedings on July 31.

For the UK tour industry, although the days when large numbers would book many months before departure are now history, this has been offset by the old practice of deposit with booking and final payment 8 weeks (or whatever) before departure disappearing as well. I can't remember the last time I bought any travel where it wasn't full pament with booking. So there is still a seasonality of cash flow which rises to a high point in early summer and then drops off through the rest of the year.

Quite why the CAA has never required proper compulsory Escrow of holiday monies paid to their licenced ATOL holders I am not sure. You can set the Escrow up so the interest on the monies in there (not a lot of interest nowadays, another problem) still goes to the operator.

[flybar]

Capacity

I can add one fact, we were recently told that the Greece market is well down this year, plenty of spare capacity because of all the troubles reported in the press.

Plenty of evidence of this.
If you look at the CAA Programme to return people from KOS they have managed to do it by taking spare capacity on Jet2 to replace 1 flight and combining 4 Viking Flights into 1 Monarch aircraft.
Clearly the number of Goldtrail passengers is not high!

[commit aviation]

Interesting point Flybar:
I know Goldtrail had about 16,000 holidaymakers in resorts & I think I read somewhere around 50,000 booked holidays (I may be wrong with the second figure.)
If that is the case it does suggest very few forward bookings if you bare in mind they had already launched Summer 2011 on their website.
Sure - not many people will have booked that far ahead but even so....

[purplehelmet]

is there a reason why they always seem to announce that a firm has gone bump on friday afternoon/evening or is it just coincedence?

[David Sharpe]

Once all of the Goldtrail customers are finally home, do we know roughly how many weekly flights will be lost from the schedules. In terms of Turkey, I am guessing that the additional flights that have been operating into Scotland and Northern Ireland since the end of June will shortly have been moving South to co-incide with the start of the School Holidays in UK commencing this weekend. I know a few additional flights have been appearing on arrivals and departure boards at airports like Newcastle, Humberside, Leeds, Luton, etc, in the last couple of weeks which will now presmably be lost ? Is it true that most of the flights into Greece appear to have operated on Viking Airlines ? As mentioned earlier, it appears that Viking Airlines are not carrying out the repatriation flights, although the flights still appear to be operating (presumably for Kiss Flights) so presumably there will not be any loss of movements into and out of Greece ?

[mathers_wales_uk]

Cardiff have lost 5 weekly flights in the demise of Goldtrail which means approx 1,000 passengers a week each way for summer season only.

Turkuaz x 2 weekly
Onur Air x 1 weekly
SAGA x 2 weekly

For an airport the size of Cardiff it will have more of an impact compared to some of the larger airports.

[transwede]

NCL has lost 5 departures per week due to the demise of Goldtrail - some would say it is a significant number to loose.

[Travel Agent]

In response to the earlier post, Goldtrail had been trading since 1998. The former boss of Kosmar (an XL company) set up the Greek operation but left soon after.