Turkey and Greece specialist Tapestry Holidays is planning to cut capacity by around 15 percent this summer to cope with the current crisis in the market.
And the operator is also cutting internal costs by as much as possible, including stopping free lunches for staff.
Like most operators, Tapestry has seen a sharp drop in bookings since Christmas and managing director Nick Wrightman said action was necessary to ensure the company would be on a sound footing in the future.
“We usually expect to sell around 35,000 holidays, but we will cut that to 30,000 at the most and we may cut more,” said Wrightman.
“We are tightening our belts everywhere. We have excellent staff and we have asked them to be understanding of some of the cuts we have to make.
“For every operator, cash is king. We have to concentrate on getting the bookings in and keeping our costs under control. That is the only issue at the moment.”
Wrightman said Tapestry had an excellent period up until Christmas, mainly because it had offered past customers deals to re-book with the company.
“We were 48 percent up on last year going into 2003,” said Wrightman. “On January 5 this year we had booked 12,161 passengers for 2003. That compares with 8,219 for 2002 at the same period last year.
“But from January 5 to the middle of February, we’d only taken two and a half thousand bookings and we would have expected to have taken a lot more than that.
“The position we found ourselves in at mid-February was that we’d booked out around 43 percent of our holidays. That’s a similar figure to the same time last year, which doesn’t sound too bad, but the trend is worrying.
“Whatever happens it is going to be a very difficult year for the industry.”
Wrightman said he was concerned that some people might want to cancel their holidays and take a refund because of the uncertainty in the market.
“Everyone is having a problem at the moment and we just have to make sure that we come through this period,” he said.
Read our previous interviews:
06-March-2003 Interview: David Michels, chief executive, Hilton International group
06-March-2003 Interview: Labour peer Baroness Dean
27-Feb-2003 Interview: Liberal Democrat MP, Lord Thurso
27-Feb-2003
