Portugal is hoping it will see limited immediate fallout from the collapse of British tour company Thomas Cook but industry officials think the country will need more aggressive tourism marketing. Segundo Joao Fernandes, president of the Algarve Regional Tourism authority, says Thomas Cook had already reduced its operations in the popular southern region and that many holiday packages it offered in Portugal relied on flights with other airlines. Fernandes told the Expresso newspaper that only 20,000 passengers, about 0.2% of those going through the region’s main airport in Faro, had bookings with Thomas Cook in 2019.  Pedro Costa Ferreira, president of Portugal’s Association of Travel Agencies, or APAVT, says in the long run hoteliers will need to find other travel companies and use more aggressive marketing to attract British vacationers.

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Fewer tourists in Portugal

Portugal already fears fewer tourists due to Brexit, Britain’s planned departure from the European Union. One media campaign tells British holidaymakers they are “Brelcome” to visit and says “Portugal will never leave you.” The German government says it is considering a request from the airline Condor, which is owned by Thomas Cook, for a bridging loan but won’t say when it will decide. Economy Ministry spokesman Korbinian Wagner confirmed Monday that the government had received the application from Condor, which says it is still flying. He wouldn’t specify how much money it is seeking. The news agency DPA, citing unidentified government sources, put the figure at about 200 million euros ($220 million).

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Thomas Cook ceased 

The British parent company Thomas Cook ceased trading earlier Monday and the future of its German subsidiaries is uncertain.
The German government did provide a loan to prevent the immediate grounding of insolvent Air Berlin in 2017, but Wagner said every case is different. Tunisia’s government is offering assurances that Thomas Cook clients won’t be prevented from leaving the country, following British media reports that vacationers were blocked at a hotel because of a payment dispute.
Tunisia’s TAP news agency says the country’s tourism minister, Rene Trabelsi, intervened to resolve an issue that arose with British tourists who’d been staying in a hotel in the resort city of Hammamet. The TAP report did not name the hotel, but a British vacationer told BBC radio on Sunday that the Les Orangers beach resort in Hammamet, near Tunis, demanded extra money from guests who were about to leave, for fear it wouldn’t be paid what it is owed by Thomas Cook.

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Tourists' demands

Ryan Farmer said many tourists refused the demand since they had already paid Thomas Cook, so security guards shut the hotel’s gates and “were not allowing anyone to leave.” Farmer said it was like “being held hostage.” But Tunisia’s Tourism Ministry, cited by TAP, denied Sunday that British tourists were sequestered at a Hammamet hotel. It said instead that “checkout procedures were delayed for a while at the request of the hotel keeper.” It said the British group later checked out and flew home “after being given apologies for the delay.” The ministry vowed that “no such problem of blockage will be repeated” and said it is coordinating with hotel owners and travel agencies “to ensure that all tourists leave Tunisia in the best conditions.”

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