Kategorie: News
Preliminary insolvency proceedings FTI Touristik GmbH
Despite intensive negotiations with competitors, no solution has been found to take over the package holidays: All trips with departure dates from Saturday, o6. July 2024, will be cancelled immediately by FTI. Payments made to date by package holiday customers are secured via the DRSF. Customers do not have to make any further payments.
It is now certain that there will be no more FTI holidays. Following a decision by the creditors' committee, the tour operator is cancelling all package holidays booked with it. In total, this probably involves more than 175,000 holiday bookings. Customers will be refunded their money by the German Travel Security Fund. The decision had been expected in the industry, while other market participants had been wondering from the outset why the provisional insolvency administrator did not immediately cancel all holiday trips.
Axel Bierbach, the provisional insolvency administrator, initially had other plans. He wanted to find competitors who would have been prepared to organise the trips instead of FTI. Despite intensive efforts and negotiations, no satisfactory solution could be found to take over the remaining package holidays that had already been booked. FTI Touristik GmbH will therefore immediately cancel all trips with departure dates from Saturday, 6 July 2024. Following the corresponding decision by the creditors' committee on Friday afternoon, the company has started to inform the affected customers and FTI's service partners, such as travel agencies and hoteliers, about the cancellations. All package tours and certain individual services that customers have booked for departures from 6 July 2024 onwards via the insolvent companies FTI Touristik GmbH and BigXtra Touristik GmbH as well as via the 5vorFlug sales brand are affected.
No convincing result for a takeover could be achieved
Around 843 people work for FTI Touristik GmbH in Germany and 75 for its subsidiary Big Xtra, which is also insolvent. Around 11,000 people work for the tour operator worldwide, and the company generated consolidated sales of around 4.1 billion euros in the 2022/23 financial year. The provisional insolvency administrator wants to continue to explore all restructuring options within the FTI Group and is in numerous discussions to this end, according to a statement.
"In close cooperation with FTI and the German Travel Security Fund, we have worked very hard over the past ten days to find a good solution in the interests of FTI's customers and partners so that package holidays that have already been booked can still go ahead. The DRSF would have been prepared to settle existing refund claims in cooperation with one or more acquiring competitors. This would have enabled holidaymakers on a tight budget to start their trips without having to wait for a refund. Unfortunately, we were unable to find such a solution despite the great efforts of all those involved," Bierbach said on Friday. "In intensive negotiations with various competitors, we initially saw promising solutions. However, in the short time available, we were unable to achieve a convincing result for a takeover of the package holidays booked with FTI and BigXtra," he said. In order to finally give customers the necessary planning security before the start of the summer holidays and to enable them to immediately rebook their trip with another provider, the decision had to be made to cancel all remaining trips. With the cancellation of all package tours, FTI's travel agency partners now also have the opportunity to offer their customers alternative tours.
In contrast to package holidays, individual services are not covered
Bierbach confirmed that all advance payments already made and any advance payments made by package holidaymakers will be refunded by the German Travel Security Fund (DRSF) and that no package holidaymaker need fear that they will not get their money back. However, customers who have booked individual services such as flights, hotels and transfers via FTI are not entitled to a refund of payments already made by the DRSF.
No more value available
According to Bierbach, FTI travel was an important economic factor in the holiday destinations, especially for hotels and transport companies. The creditors' committee therefore did not take the decision to cancel all trips lightly. This step is devastating for the Munich-based tour operator. As a tour operator, FTI "no longer has any value, no regular customers and customer lists in the present, no hotel and guest confidence for the future," says Felix Kolbeck, Professor at the Faculty of Tourism at Munich University of Applied Sciences. "The FTI brand has been burnt along with a lot of money."
Known for particularly cheap holidays
The provisional insolvency administrator cited several reasons why it was ultimately not possible to find a solution for the takeover of the package holiday business by one or more competitors. According to Bierbach, many service partners in the target destinations were no longer available. "In the past few days, a large number of local FTI companies that take care of hotels and transfers in the holiday destinations have dropped out, meaning that it would no longer have been possible to run the package holidays as originally planned," says Bierbach. Specifically, many hotels no longer felt bound by the agreements with the company due to the insolvency. In addition, the highly dynamic nature of the travel market and the current competitive situation would have prevented a solution.
With the Munich-based tour operator, a rival could disappear from the market that was known for particularly cheap holidays and had therefore increased price pressure. This could be expensive for customers in the long term, but very probably not this year - on the contrary. In the short term, it is more likely to become cheaper, as airlines and hoteliers have now freed up contingents that they need to fill again.