Are Thomas Cook going out of business?

[Kayzr]

I've been having a little look at holidays. We've got this years booked but looking for ideas of next years.

I was looking in the Thomas Cook website but are they likely to be going out of business soon?

Thanks

Although quite a lot of travel firms have gone bust over the last few years, I personally can't see it happening with TC's. They are reviewing the whole of their business and as they have recently merged with Travelcare, they will def be cutting back on the amount of high street shops they have.

The travel industry is not in a great way full stop at the moment, but you def get more protection with a holiday packaged by a travel agents at the moment, rather than putting a package together yourself (via the internet or diffrent companies). Although putting a holiday together yourself can work out a lot cheaper, you just don't have the protection that you do booking through a reputable agent.

We are going on a holiday through TC next month and we were very worried about the reports about them in Oct/Nov last year. They were in danger but they agreed a short term credit agreement with its banks that kept it going in Oct and then in Nov they secured a new long term credit agreement with their banks, see here. This new agreement assured the business' safety until 30 April 2013.

Again, reported at the time part of the new deal was that they needed to streamline the business to make future profitability better and so they have since announced that they are cutting jobs and some branches will close, see here. They have also sold their chain of Spanish hotels, see here.

I was very relieved that the new credit agreements were arranged because it meant our holiday was safe, but TBH I don't think I'll book with them again. The holiday was ATOL protected and we had insurance so I doubt we would have been out of pocket so for a normal holiday it wouldn't be too bad if you can just rebook and do it another time. For us, we travel abroad for to see family and for family weddings etc, so if a holiday got cancelled it wouldn't just be a case of rebooking because we'd miss the wedding or whatever, so we're going to avoid TC now. Though TBH I doubt any holiday company are doing all that well at the moment!

My mom has worked there for over 15 years.. She's confident all is well and I believe her.. We've booked our holiday for August.. I wouldn't worry.. They seem to have sorted out issues with creditors for now