FTI tourism bankruptcy leaves 175,000 travellers stranded

The German travel agency FTI Touristik has gone bankrupt, and all trips planned from July 6th will be cancelled, reports Rzeczpospolita, citing the travel industry portal Reise vor-9. The agency's affected customers number up to 175,000.

According to "Rzeczpospolita," FTI's insolvency administrator, Axel Bierbach, announced that all trips planned from July 6th are cancelled. Earlier, this decision only concerned trips planned up to and including July 5th. The company hoped that with other travel agencies, vacations could be arranged for about 175,000 people.

Although the value of these trips was not disclosed, it is known to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars - reports "Rz". This concerns organized tours and individual travel services purchased from agencies within the FTI group, such as FTI Touristik, Big Xtra, or 5 vor Flug.

Competing travel agencies were not interested in taking over the trips organized by FTI, preferring to take over the customers themselves and offer them their services.

Bierbach explains that in the last ten days, they intensively sought a solution to the problem together with the German Travel Security Fund (DRSF), and the DRSF was ready to take over all payments. Thanks to this, customers, especially those with smaller budgets, could go on vacation without waiting for a refund—reports "Rz."

Unfortunately, trips organized by FTI were not possible due to the bankruptcy of some companies serving the tour operator's clients in tourist locations. These include, among others, companies providing transfers and hotels, which stated that they are not obliged to honor previous contracts.

The administrator, considering the customers' interests, decided not to cancel all reservations immediately, although FTI's bankruptcy is a significant blow to them.

According to "Rz" estimates, the FTI Group is the third-largest tourism group in Europe in terms of revenue, after TUI Group and Der Touristik. The company employed 11,000 staff worldwide.

Tourists who went to Hurghada with FTI by June 5th do not need to worry that their stay will be shortened, that they will incur accommodation costs, or that they will have problems returning home - reports the portal turystyka.wp.pl.

As stated on June 10th by the Egyptian Minister of Tourism and Antiquities, Ahmed Issa, at that time, about 5,000 tourists were in the Red Sea province (mainly in Hurghada) using FTI's services. At the time of the travel agency's bankruptcy declaration, there were 11,000 guests in the Red Sea province, mainly from Germany and Austria. FTI offers could also be purchased in Poland. The departures were from Germany, so they were mainly utilized by residents of the western part of the country.

The German Ambassador to Cairo, Frank Hartmann, along with the Austrian Ambassador Georg Postinger, confirmed that FTI has insurance for insolvency. The German Travel Insurance Fund guarantees that all costs of using hotel facilities and Egyptian companies will be covered.