Tuesday, September 24, 2019

THOMAS COOK BITES THE DUST

by Bob Walsh

The 178-year old Thomas Cook Company, tour guides and arrangers extraordinaire, just went belly up stranding about 150,000 people, mostly citizens of the U K, in various places around the world. It seems that the British government will be responsible for paying the way home for this huge number of its citizens.

I was not aware of it but apparently the company has been in serious trouble for about a year and was courting a Chinese takeover, which didn't happen. (Maybe they will just come in and buy up the pieces.)

Hindsight is 20-20, but I am not sure I would have booked a trip to the dark side of the moon with a company that was about to go toes up and I am not sure I would have booked a trip to the dark side of the moon without checking easily available public records to see what was going on with the company. Of course, when an organization has been around that long and is, generally speaking, known to be reputable and reliable it is easy enough to go on auto pilot.

In any event a lot of people will end up with a truly memorable vacation experience, if they survive it.

2 comments:

Trey Rusk said...

Friends tell me lots of people from the UK are stranded in Las Vegas.

bob walsh said...

There are worse places to be stranded.