In the four years of writing this blog I have never witnessed a week like the one just gone. BA strike threat, collapse of FlyGlobespan and now I am hearing that Allbury Travel Group who traded as Libra Holidays and Argo Holidays have also gone into administration.
Thousands of consumers with ruined holidays
Travel media, TTG reports that the group operated air package holidays and flights out of Gatwick, Manchester, Newcastle, Birmingham and Leeds Bradford airports to Greece, Cyprus and Egypt. 4,000 holidaymakers are set to have their holiday ruined.
Lack of information
Apparently, the Allbury Travel Group sold holiday mostly through other travel agents. What is incredible is that none of the websites has information about the administration. Also Google ads have now appeared, rather than advice for consumers.
The Libra Holidays twitter account doesn’t even link to the CAA website just tells people that they have gone into administration.
Add your questions or experiences
Thankfully the CAA have posted information for consumers. Of course I will update this post when I have more information but if you have been affected by the administration of Allbury Travel Group who traded as Libra Holidays, Argo Holidays then please do feel free to ask any questions.
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Darren Cronian | 19 December, 2009 at 11:11 am
Update:
The Allbury group also includes Jetlife as a trading name. I didn’t include this website in the original post as I wasn’t sure if consumers booking through this site were affected because the website is still open for bookings. It appears that Jetlife is also one of the trading names in administraion as part of the Allbury Group.
Nick | 19 December, 2009 at 11:28 am
Darren
Allbury group is small, has down sized massively in last 2 years. There is less than 100 passengers abroad and few thousand advance bookings. As you said mostly traded via Agents. Most customers who are away trips will continue as normal and will return home as normal. There maybe one or 2 issues with hotels.
Travel Agents handle small failures differantly. And most customers will now of been contacted.
I agree there should be standard text applied by someone like the CAA to websites when ATOL companies fail, problem here seems to be there web company is closed for the weekend.
After my post re Globespan and Skyeurope going bust being owed a lot of money by merchant credit card provider. Can you guess who handle there payment system… yes none other than Eclear… being to make everyone I speak to wonder about them.
Darren Cronian | 19 December, 2009 at 1:24 pm
@ Nick
Thanks for the info. I must admit I dont know how large most of the travel companies out there but I published about this news because I knew both the brands. I try and only cover the larger administrations because the posts are indexed by Google within a few minutes and its good to have somewhere that consumers can find info/ find links to places that can help like CAA.
I have to say the CAA seem quicker on the ball when a company goes into administration but the information on the actual websites could be done much quicker and better quality information.
Gareth | 19 December, 2009 at 7:42 pm
Why is your site the only one telling us about the administration?? We were due to fly out on Tuesday morning. Nothing on the website. This is absolutely disgusting.
Paula | 19 December, 2009 at 8:01 pm
We have just returned home from a 2 hour journey to the airport where we were informed Libra Holidays were in administration. No one there to greet us but after spending an hour walking around the airport we were told that we would not be going on holiday for Christmas.
Thank you Libra holidays.
Darren Cronian | 19 December, 2009 at 8:07 pm
@ Gareth
I suspect because it’s the weekend, less people have covered it. To me 4,000 people now without holidays is a big thing, so, that’s why I wrote about it. I am disgusted that the affected sites do not yet have any information on them for consumers.
@ Paula
Sorry to hear that. I cannot imagine what it must be like to be looking forward to a holiday to find out that you won’t be going. Hopefully you will get the price of your holiday refunded soon. Let us know how you get on.
Gareth | 19 December, 2009 at 8:11 pm
Darren I am glad that you are here to help us. I have printed out the information from the Civil aviation people and plan to send it early next week. How long do you think it will take for them to refund our money?
Obviously we would like to book a holiday elsewhere when we receive our money back.
Jim McPhee | 19 December, 2009 at 8:13 pm
I would like to know if the figure of only 100 people stranded abroad is true? Seems very low considering that both Libra and Argo are well known travel brands. Could this be the CAA hiding the real facts to improve confidence in travel?
Darren Cronian | 19 December, 2009 at 8:17 pm
@ Gareth
That is a difficult one for me to answer considering it took over 12 months for them to refund the XL claims and the fact that they will be looking at thousands of claims from both this administration and also Flyglobespan.
@ Jim
I am not suggesting for one minute that the 100 figure is not correct, but I agree that it sounds low. Who knows. The low number of stranded numbers does certainly seem to have an impact on the lack of media attention its had.
Nick | 20 December, 2009 at 1:30 am
@ Jim
Allbury is now really that small, and if you think that it made up of what was 2 big tour companies, Libra and Argo. You see how much things have changed.
Important note if you have a flight only on secluded airline and have the tickets you must still travel. No refund will be given for these.
@ Darren
Claims will be a lot faster for this, (guessing a couple months tops if paperwork correct) keep in mind for XL ATOL at peak where getting 10′s thousands claims per day. With this there looking at a couple thousand from each company.
Vikki | 20 December, 2009 at 9:27 am
I had booked flights through Libra Holidays, going to Sharm on Boxing Day, have just rang Jet2 and my booking were never made. I’m absolutely devastated. CAA are saying to me as the email I received from Libra re. my booking, doesn’t mention ATOL on it, I’m not protected either. How can this be when I made the booking with an ATOL company?! Makes no sense to me. So basically is seems I’m waving goodbye to £1750 and also no holiday, my 4 year old is going to be so upset.
Anu | 20 December, 2009 at 11:18 am
We paid a travel agent for a package. I understand they booked the flights thorugh Allbury but the accomodation in Egypt was booked direct. Also the agent’s terms in the contract has a clause which states:
If we are forced to cancel your booking for any reason after the date full payment is due then we may offer an alternative flight/holiday (if available) or make a full refund of all monies paid if either there is no alternative flight/holiday or the alternative offerred is unacceptable to you.
Does the abpve mean that the travel agent will refund us directly and we do not have to go through the CAA claim process?
Ernie Bilko | 20 December, 2009 at 4:35 pm
Seems to me that the era of cheap holidays is over. How many chose Globespan flights and Libra holidays becasue they were the cheapest? Libra nearly went in to administration in the past becasue they couldn’t afford to pay an airline for the seats that they had bought. Guess who that airline was? Yep XL – who were forced in to a a debt for equity swap. And guess what happened when XL when bust? Yep the owners of Libra bought the Libra shares back again. Oh and one other thing, has E-Clear got anything to do with Cyprus per chance, just like XL, Allbury and a few others? Lots of digging to be done for a journalist who wants to make a nuisance of himself methinks.
Darren Cronian | 20 December, 2009 at 11:16 pm
@ Vikki
That sound awful. Did you receive any invoices or paperwork from Libra about the booking? Just because you have booked with an ATOL company that is bonded it does not necessarily mean that your holiday was booked as a package.
Where was your accommodation booked or did you just have a flight booked?
@ Anu
What did it say on the invoice from Libra? If they have booked flight and accommodation seperate then you will probably won’t be covered through ATOL. How did you pay for the flight/accommodation with the company?
@ Ernie
I don’t think price was a factor of people’s booking their holiday with these companies. It doesn’t matter how much you have paid for an holiday, the important factor is that you book with a package holiday with an ATOL company and your protected.
The danger is that agencies arent just selling package holidays but are also dynamically packaging flights and acommodation with third parties and I think this is causing a lot of confusion for consumers.
Vikki | 21 December, 2009 at 10:27 am
Darren, my invoice has just popped through my letter box and yes, thankfully I have paid 3 x £2.50 for ATOL Protection Levy, I’m soooo glad, as been so depressed all weekend, at least we can now get our money back. We had only just booked our flights on Thursday, were planning on booking our accomodation on Tuesday (payday!!), so glad we hadn’t booked that already, at least we haven’t lost that too!
Nick | 21 December, 2009 at 1:40 pm
@ Darren, your coment at Ernie is off the mark from what travel agents see. Time and time again we know people book the cheapest even if just to save a tenner, often these days it means your holiday is unprotected (it cost over £30 per person to protect a holiday fully). I even had one customer who got us to price match (right off in the shop) and then booked with someone else to save £4 in total on a holiday of 6. Differance one holiday protected one not and customer knew this and knew what it ment.
John | 21 December, 2009 at 2:03 pm
We travelled to Rhodes with Argo in 2002. They charged an arm and a leg but booked us on the cheapest airline they could find which was 24 hours late getting us there with no representatives at the airport. The airline then went bust while we were there and we had to fly home a day early having lost two days of our holiday overall. They didn’t give us a penny in compensation despite repeated letters. I remember writing in one of them that companies that treat their customers like this don’t survive for too long so it is gratifying to see them disappear. Good riddance Argo.
Darren Cronian | 21 December, 2009 at 2:41 pm
@ Nick
Sorry, what I meant but didn’t explain myself very well: none of these companies specialised solely on cheap holidays. One consumer mentioned she paid £1700 which is not cheap to me. I do agree that price is the no.1 factor for consumers but that does not necessarily mean that they should expect to lose their money or have their holiday cancelled due to administration.
Bussy | 27 December, 2009 at 12:13 pm
Getting fed up with all these companies going bust. Had a load of issues only back in October because Sky Europe went bust and we had booked a mini break to Prague. Managed to get the money back from my credit card company in that instance so assume I’ll be able to do the same again. Is this the problem when booking with the more budget companies?
Nick | 31 December, 2009 at 10:49 am
@ Darren, been away so late reply.
When I say cheap, I mean customers will book a 1690 pound holiday unprotected rather than a 1720 pound protected one. In other words price is king, protection takes second place. Though in our company we are seeing a change.
With the 2 tier system it is just not fair.. you know (from other posts) the travel industry have been saying and lobbing on this since 1992, however the government is just not interested (till now) and have before squashed a bill to protect everyone.
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