Heatwaves, data breaches, drones and the ‘B’ word…

It feels like we started the year talking about Brexit and its potential impact on the travel industry, and we have ended the year talking about…..Brexit and its potential impact on the travel industry. But let’s take a look at what’s happened in between.

Thankfully there were no major failures this year, but we lost budget airline Primera Air, whose flights from Stansted to the US were grounded in October when it ran out of cash, and also Cypriot airline Cobalt Air, which collapsed around the same time.

In case we were still in any doubt that cybercrime is the new single biggest threat to customers’ financial security, around 500 million Starwood customers were targeted by hackers in the autumn.

It was possibly one of the worst data breaches recorded, but several other travel companies were also hacked this year, including Air Canada, British Airways, Cathay Pacific, Eurostar, Radisson and Thomas Cook, all of which had potentially severe consequences for hundreds of thousands of customers whose personal information was stolen.

Fake holiday illness complaints continued to be a thing this year, but following widespread publicity and action by ABTA, courts started to clamp down on bogus claims. In March, a couple was ordered to pay record damages of £15,000 to TUI after filing a fake sickness claim for £5000 compensation following a holiday in Benidorm. November, a judge referred a case to the police after ruling that Tom Oakley had falsely claimed to have suffered food poisoning during a TUI holiday to Sunny Beach in Bulgaria to get £2,500 compensation.

Nevertheless, UK travellers are becoming increasingly litigious, which is of concern from the industry. A 51-year-old businessman, Stephen Prosser from Wales, tried to sue British Airways for £10,000 after claiming he was squashed by an over-weight passenger on a flight from London to Bangkok. No doubt the airline industry breathed a sigh of relief when the case was thrown out by a judge, who accused Prosser of exaggerating.

2018 was also the year that companies started taking the gender pay gap more seriously after a senior BBC editor quit in January because she was paid much less than her male colleagues. It was revealed that in the travel industry there is also a huge disparity between salaries paid to male and female workers. In the spring, Thomas Cook was one of the companies that promised to tackle the gender pay gap after revealing that on average its female staff earned 22% less than its male employee. Incidentally, Ryanair had a gender pay gap of 72% while Jet2, TUI Airways and easyJet all had gender pay gaps of above 40%.

In the early summer, the travel industry suffered from the double whammy of the heatwave and (misplaced) World Cup aspirations, which caused foreign holiday bookings to stall.  On the plus side, the football tournament introduced holidaymakers to Russia, sparking an interest in travel to the destination.

Holidaymakers went on to suffer a summer of disruption, with air traffic control strikes in Europe and strikes by Ryanair crew causing mayhem. Eurocontrol revealed earlier this month that 2018 was set to become one of the worst years for flight delays in almost a decade – and that was before multiple rogue drone sightings over Gatwick caused hundreds of flights to be grounded during some of the pre-Christmas getaway, disrupting the travel plans of more than 120,000 passengers. Experts have predicted that this type of sabotage could become a more commonplace occurrence in the future, creating yet another potential headache for the travel industry.

While dealing with flight disruption this year, the industry was also grappling with the new Package Travel Directive, introduced on July 1 less than three weeks after the government revealed what it actually included.

Turkey (pictured below) and Tunisia, which had fallen off the tourist map following a series of terror attacks, bounced back this year. Thomas Cook became the first major tour operator to re-launch flights to Tunisia in February, with TUI following in May. Many operators also reported a resurgence in bookings to Turkey, after beefing up their programmes for the summer. In April, Thomas Cook said its Turkey packages were up more than 80% year on year.

In November, Thomas Cook revealed it had made a huge loss this year, resulting in a net debt of £389 million. Its share price plunged to a new low, before chairman Frank Meysman snapped up £80,000 worth, helping it to recover slightly. UK boss Ingo Burmester decided to quit for a new role with DER Touristik in Germany, leaving Chris Mottershead to take back the reins.

While Thomas Cook blamed the summer heatwave for a lack of bookings, an altogether different weather problem caused cancellations in early December when Lapland suffered its first case of ‘no snow’ in 30 years, meaning some very disappointed children, parents and grandparents didn’t get to see Santa.

Of course, Brexit has never been far from our minds, with questions such as will flights be grounded, will Brits need visas for holidays in Europe and will tourists still flock to Britain after we leave the EU next March. Just before Christmas, the industry was left reeling after reports surfaced in a national newspaper claiming the government was planning to advise Brits not to book their holidays are March 29 in case of a no-deal Brexit. The claims were quickly denied by No 10 but by then the damage had been done. The industry rallied round and demanded action and voicing their dismay. A few days later, the Transport Secretary issued a statement saying the European Commission had demonstrated a ‘clear commitment’ to travel and that holidaymakers can continue to book with confidence – just in time for the start of the peak booking season. Phew!

That’s if there’s no repeat of the drone chaos at Gatwick that caused pre-Christmas misery for thousands. The airline industry has long been asking ministers to take the issue of drones near airports more seriously. Surely they will now…

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