By Chris Bradley
Thomas Cook has reported that it has estimated that it will lose £20m due to the unrest in the Middle East. The UK tour operator has seen a significant decrease in trading in Egypt as well as Tunisia and they have had 150,000 cancellations and have also had to pay to return people home early.
This is a big blow to the company who found that trade with Europe was actually increasing on last years figures, with many people flying to Tunisia and Egypt from Europe but they felt that UK passengers were more cautious and that business here had not returned to what would have been expected at this time of the year.
They have also had to put fuel supplements on some journeys because fuel prices have gone up by 20% and so this has had an effect. However, they are positive about the rest of the year, feeling that things so far look better than last year and so it is still a positive story, despite the losses. The thing is that it seems that we are in a time where people want to protest as there are even protests taking place regularly in the UK now. This means that there could be more unrest in countries and this could lead to more cancellations and disruptions through the year. It also seems like it will take longer than predicted to sort out the problems in Libya and this could lead to fuel prices rising even more which could cause more people to decide not to take holidays.
