The insolvency of Europe's third-largest tour operator now affects another 175,000 customers. The good news: They can now look for alternatives and get their money back.
The travel group FTI Touristik has now canceled all booked trips. Following a decision by the creditors' committee on Friday, the provisional insolvency administrator Axel Bierbach announced that all trips planned from July 6 onwards would also be canceled.
The German Travel Insurance Fund (DRSF) would have been willing to settle the settlement of existing reimbursement claims with other tour operators. However, no solution to take over the package tours could be found in such a short time. In order to finally give FTI customers the necessary planning security before the start of the summer holidays and to enable them to immediately rebook their trip with another provider, all remaining trips have now been cancelled.
This affects 175,000 package tours and certain individual services that customers booked for departures from July 6 through the insolvent companies FTI Touristik GmbH and BigXtra Touristik GmbH as well as through the sales brand 5vorFlug. With the cancellation of all package tours, FTI's travel agency partners can now also offer their customers alternative trips. The company has begun to inform customers, travel agencies and hotels.
Bierbach estimated the total volume of existing travel bookings to be in the high three-digit million range. All advance payments from package holidaymakers would be refunded by the travel guarantee fund, and every package holidaymaker would get their money back. Customers who have only booked individual services such as flights, hotels and transfers through FTI, however, are not entitled to a refund of payments already made by the DRSF.
The provisional insolvency administrator was able to secure the future of the approximately 230 TVG travel agencies: Raiffeisen Vertriebs GmbH is taking over FTI's 50 percent share in the Touristik Vertriebsgesellschaft TVG and is thus the sole owner, as Bierbach announced.
