The travel group FTI Touristik has now also cancelled all trips booked from July 6th. Customers who have booked package tours will receive their money back via a security fund – booked individual services are not included.
The insolvent travel group FTI has now also canceled booked trips with a departure date from July 6. This was announced by the provisional insolvency administrator Axel Bierbach following a decision by the creditors’ committee. 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 was found in the short term.
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 6th through the insolvent companies FTI Touristik GmbH and BigXtra Touristik GmbH as well as through the sales brand 5vorFlug.
After the insolvency of the third largest European tour operator became known, the group initially only cancelled trips up to July 5. 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.
Individual services will probably not be refunded
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 DRSF, 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.