Are Tui about to go bust?

[Afterfire]

I booked a holiday for 2023 this weekend. It’s our first “proper” holiday as a family and a huge amount of money to us. When I first booked it I was very excited and I did the usual things of checking trip advisor and google for reviews of the resort and overwhelmingly the reviews were really positive so went ahead and booked it all.

Since then I’ve joined a few Facebook groups related to Tui and the hotel itself (also Tui) and I’m starting to panic a bit because there are so many complaints - people being left stranded at airports for hours (literally 10 plus hours) without any communication, whole holidays being cancelled at the last minute etc etc. The actual Tui Facebook page itself it’s flooded with complaints and people being unable to contact anyone.

I’ve only paid the deposit so far and given the holiday isn’t till 2023 I’ve got time to work out what to do.

Several of the comments on Facebook suggest Tui is £600m in debt and owned by a Russian whose funds have been severed by the war sanctions…. No idea if that’s true or not?!

Do people still trust Tui? Are they as bad as they seem now? Would I be better to cancel or is this just a case of things being all a bit of a shit show after covid and it will get back to normal by the time we go do you think?

Our return flight back to birmnngham is 3pm this afternoon. Heard nothing about it being cancelled. No issues throughout our holiday with tui.

My holiday was cancelled on Sat with TUI
I have rebooked and going on Wed with Jet 2
Same airport I will update and let you know if Jet 2 are as bad as Tui 😂

Just got back from a TUI holiday. No complaints. Everything went well. No delays at the airport. We're in the process of booking again for next year

@orangeisthenewpuce we are also thinking about booking again but next years prices😮.

Friends flew to Spain from Manchester their luggage lost, whole flight lost luggage. They've bought replacement . Plane going back stuck in Spain because there's no baggage handlers just mountain of luggage at the airport. It seems baggage handlers have walked out

Hope they get it sorted but FWIW the plane might not be stuck...if the baggage handlers don't go back to work then in extremis you leave the baggage where it is, and fly the aircraft back to UK so at least it and crew can carry on carrying on for the rest of the day and you don't cancel even more flights

Yes it's a pretty extreme course of action, might not happen here but it's option that has been used.

Update
Tui have repaid the 5k already for my cancelled holiday on Saturday
so now I just need to claim for the 350 delay compensation for the three of us
Surprised it was so quick for the refund so can’t grumble about that

Chaos at Gatwick again today. TBH a lot of this is staff shortages due to Brexit. Airlines used to have the whole of Europe to recruit from at short notice, sometimes on temporary contracts to cover peak periods.

It isn't people being off with Covid, they don't have enough staff and can't recruit enough staff. In 2020 and 2021 this wasn't an issue as obviously only a fraction of people were travelling. Now lots of people are going on holiday, or trying to, they need all the staff and can't recruit them.

@CeeJay81 check if your flight has left the departure airport, we did this when we were caught up with the Gatwick drone saga, we knew if the plane didn’t leave we wouldn’t be going back on it. Thankfully it left pretty close to time, but you could feel the tension of the passengers on the plane, as we didn’t know if we would be able to land at Gatwick or whether the flight would be diverted if more drone activity was spotted. I hope you get back ok.

@Roselilly36 Well I've just checked Chania airport and it's saying 30 min delay atm on there. Just waiting on the bus at hotel atm. Will see if it gets delayed more.

That sounds good, if it’s left the UK, you should be fine🤞

@70kid

Swift refund, at least that is something.

TBH a lot of this is staff shortages due to Brexit. Airlines used to have the whole of Europe to recruit from at short notice, sometimes on temporary contracts to cover peak periods.

Even if you can recruit locally there's the whole issue of security vetting which anybody working Airside needs, even temps, to some extent...and the vetting process seems to have slowed down, like so many other things ATM

Basically it was easy for airlines and airports to pretty much flick a switch get people off payroll two years ago, it was always going to be much harder to rebuild the operation due vetting etc and then training..

Those with bookings it might be worth checking here as lots of people are talking about upcoming flights etc —

www.facebook.com/groups/528676851136961/?ref=sharewww.facebook.com/groups/528676851136961/?ref=share&exp=9594

Hi
Not sure about Tui but I do think easyjet are in trouble.
I went on my honeymoon with tui with no issues. Lovely hotel. Good day trip booked with them. No issues at airports.
I'd just wait and see what happens. Don't pay anymore on it jusy save the money in an ISA or savings account x

lot of this is staff shortages due to Brexit

It has got absolutely nothing to do with brexit, and everything to do with the airports making thousands of staff redundant during covid! My friend being one of many thousands, the old airport staff have since now found alternative employment and it takes months to train new staff, often on lower wages (some had to take a 10% pay cut as well) with other jobs available in the same area, and hey presto you have the staff shortages!! Honestly. Please stick to the actual facts.

inews.co.uk/news/crisis-hit-manchester-airport-100m-taxpayer-money-covid-pandemic-cutting-staff-1559956

There's absolutely no need to be cancelling at such short notice. Once the bookings have been taken did the tour operators not consider the lack of staff? Either way companies will be paying out in compensation to customers

The 64000 dollar question then is at what stage would you expect that consideration of staffing levels to happen and bookings made be cancelled?

TBH It's the nature of the industry that you can never completely avoid very short notice flight cancellations for all sorts of reasons (e.g. weather, engineering problems, crew duty limits, it's often a combination of causes).

On rare occasions even in supposedly the best of times with plenty of resources you have can cancellations happening after passengers have boarded.

What you don't expect the see is that sort of cancellation happening at the rate it's seems to be happening at the moment, day after day.

BA are cancelling flights well in advance, presumably with a bit more advance planning. It is hard to see how Tui, knowing the number of bookings it had over this period, and its staffing levels, wasn’t able to do any forecasting at all. Last minute issues will always come up, but you don’t go from confident that there will be no problems to this situation. I’d love to see their risk register.

The staffing issues are largely with the ancillary services rather than the airlines themselves.There are major issues with baggage having, security staff, cleaners etc causing delays. These delays are then having the knock on effect of putting crew over their allowed hours hence the cancellations being last minute. The industry simply doesn't have spare crew. They could have for sure, but that would be reflected in the prices we pay and we've come to expect cheap travel.

I'm not defending the airlines (I'm in the travel industry and supposed to be travelling on business on Friday, already in my third flight change) as the handling of the issues has been poor, but it isn't as simple as a lack of planning on their part.

Do you think it will calm down a bit next week? Flying out from Brum airport on Monday at 8:50pm with TUI. No cancellation text or email….. yet.

We are in Greece at the moment and Tui cancelled our return flight, offering us the same flight 24 hours later but we would have to leave our 5* hotel and go to a budget airport hotel overnight. We have three children. We’ve managed to buy new flights with Easyjet for today and just boarded. Tui will compensate £520 pp so they say. Appreciate not everyone is in the position to do so. There were people in tears at the hotel this morning and people whose flight was cancelled two days ago, whose alternative flight the next day had then been cancelled again…..

@EnglishGirlApproximately

These delays are then having the knock on effect of putting crew over their allowed hours hence the cancellations being last minute. The industry simply doesn't have spare crew. They could have for sure, but that would be reflected in the prices we pay and we've come to expect cheap travel.

Exactly.

What I don't understand is how they will afford all this compensation if they're having to do refunds and compensation on top. How much is it for a same day cancellation?

Agreed friend has just had compensation of£520 per person from for a delay going home they had an extra day in the resort as well. It can't last